


Vespertine

by HarpiaHarpyja



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Altered Mental States, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Creepy Gardens, Drug Use, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, Ghost Rey, Ghost Sex, Hallucinogens, Happy Ending, Haunted Houses, It's mostly Rey angst, Light Angst, Literary References & Allusions, Magic, Memory Loss, Mirror Sex, Necromancer Kylo Ren, POV Kylo Ren, POV Rey (Star Wars), Supernatural Elements, Surprise Motherfuckers, The Astral Plane, They're psychoactive plants my friends, Touch-Starved, Vaginal Fingering, orpheus and eurydice vibes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-01-15 13:57:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21254480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarpiaHarpyja/pseuds/HarpiaHarpyja
Summary: Kylo Ren comes to Nightbloomer House with one purpose in mind: expel the ghost who has been making her home there for the last quarter century. It's a well-paying job for a necromancer, and he has no personal stake in the task beyond the accrual of another paycheck. Yet when he encounters Rey, the ghost in question, she proves more resistant than he expected, and it quickly becomes evident that there are some very peculiar things about her — and the house may yet hold more secrets than either of them realizes.





	1. Arrival at Nightbloomer House

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OccasionallyCreative](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OccasionallyCreative/gifts).

> This fic was written for OccasionallyCreative as part of the TWD TTO/Dadam 'Fall is Cumming' collection, based on the following prompt.
> 
> _Ghost Rey/human Ben AU. Victorian or modern. Ben discovers her living in an abandoned house. "Can I keep you?" (Casper, 1995) (Doesn't mean I'm asking for a Casper AU, just that this is such a Reylo line.)_
> 
> I went with the Victorian slant, though I'd say my historical accuracy is attempted but probably not hyper-meticulous. This is Victorian England, but not exactly 100% _our_ Victorian England -- so while I've attempted to maintain authenticity and most references to places, names, and so on are real . . . it's ghost porn, y'all. ;) 
> 
> As always seems to be the case, this spiraled, but by God I kept it a reasonable length anyway. At time of posting the story is essentially completed, so I'll likely be updating it at regular intervals over the course of the next week or so. A huge thank you to Zabeta and Inmyownidiom for beta-reading this so thoroughly and being so helpful with every step of the process!
> 
> Enjoy, and happy spooky season!

On the matter of the garden, local lore maintained it had sprouted up all of a night some two decades past. Kylo had heard the stories, of course. He had done his research. The house in which he stood had belonged to an eccentric man named Lor San Tekka, who spent his life and much of his considerable wealth dabbling in knowledge both mundane and arcane. Upon his death in 1873, it became apparent that he had left the property and its contents to no one at all. Since then, it had stood full of furnishings, empty of life, and frozen in time. 

Except for the garden. There, life abounded with impossible tenacity all year round. It was meticulously kept and fastidious in its ever-evolving design, ambitious in its sprawl across the plot behind the building, and comprised entirely of crepuscular flora. All with no one to cultivate it.

And so the estate had become known simply as the Nightbloomer House, and everyone knew without doubt that it was haunted. The uncanny garden was not the only thing to have inspired such a conclusion. There were rumors of sounds at night, of things being moved around, doors closing, feet thudding across floorboards at a run. There were reports of shivering candle flames floating past the windows, gas lamps burning in the dark, and smoke creeping out of the chimneys. 

People sneaked in to investigate all the time, whether they were amateur ghost-seekers, groups of town delinquents looking for a thrill, or pairs of daring lovers in search of the darkly romantic frisson of danger. They had all stood, probably, just where Kylo stood that late afternoon in November, in the cold, dusty kitchen overlooking a garden where the green-ticked willows should have been bare and the frosted blooms slumbered until dusk. 

These intruders would have walked the halls, entered the rooms, and tapped on the walls, waiting for the exciting revelation of the resident spirit’s presence. They would not have been aware, as he was now, that the spirit watched them the entire time. 

She was standing several feet behind him. He could feel it instinctively: her eyes had not left him for nearly a minute. His spectral companion had followed him in fits and starts since his arrival the previous evening. At this point, he was certain that she believed he could not perceive her at all—and that was an impression he wished to encourage until such time as he revealed the true nature of his visit.

For now, Kylo was content to maintain the ruse of his insensibility to her. It allowed him to observe her in her natural routines and habits. Some necromancers eschewed that part of the work, but it was what he enjoyed most. Already he believed he had a good measure of her.

She was used to not being seen, that was very clear. She moved quickly, broadly, boldly. Judging by her clothing and appearance, she had been about twenty or so when she died and of the working class. She wore a dark calico skirt, a plain blouse, and sturdy hobnailed boots. Sometimes she wrapped a shawl around her shoulders, though it was impossible that she could be cold. Her hair was smooth and chestnut colored, her cheeks smattered with freckles, her expression serious and stubborn; though he could not help thinking there was something doll-like to her narrow, upturned nose and full, curving lips. Last night, she had lingered so close to him at times, almost touching, her gaze intent and probing, then disappeared for hours at a time until he heard objects shifting in a far-off room or noticed some of his personal effects had been moved as he perused another wing. 

A poltergeist, then. Though not a very mischievous or malicious one. Indeed, he was certain she had not disturbed a single object all day. Only in the night. Stranger still, one of the first things he had done on arrival was purify several rooms to limit the scope of her domain—yet none of the usual methods kept her out. Salt lines and herbal smudges be damned, she roamed the house as if it were her own. And he supposed, to her, it was.

There was something very unusual about this ghost. He was determined to figure out what it was before he sent her along into the netherrealm. 

He turned from the window, making a note to stroll the garden after the moon rose. Last night he had caught a glimpse of her tending it and was sorry to have missed her at work as he set himself up in one of the peculiarly dustless, well-kept bedrooms. Not a mistake he would make again. 

The woman was there, as he expected, lingering near the hearth. Her arms hung limp at her sides as she absorbed his aspect. Though she appeared solid enough (only centuries-old ghosts were truly transparent; she was merely a bit fuzzy around the edges if he looked too long, as if she stood behind a veil), he gave the room a quick glance, eyes gliding over her shape with trained indifference, then stepped out into the hall.

As Kylo passed her, a chill overtook him. He’d felt it before, the usual feeling of death so close at hand, cold and still and  _ thin _ , like the lacework of frost on a windowpane . . . but never quite like this. Once again, he found himself unable to place what was different, except that it felt intimate and vital. He had the distinct sense that what she wished most of all at that moment was to be seen by him. 

It stirred a memory. 

He almost looked.

  
  


⊖

  
  


The man had arrived three nights ago and never left. Rey was accustomed to unwanted trespassers in her home. They stole in like thieves—sometimes they  _ were _ thieves—chasing after a laugh or a scream. But none of those people ever stayed long, because they never saw her at all. At best, they encountered the physical signs she left in the night, which satisfied the curiosity of most. They were always gone by morning. 

Good riddance. No one respected the dead anymore.  _ This _ man, though . . . she had no idea what he could possibly want.

Oh, she had tried to figure it out. What else could she do? She watched him all the time, but all he did was wander the house, look in drawers, peer through windows, take breaks to write or read or smoke. He went about his life as if he lived there. 

Naturally, she’d gone through his things several times over since his arrival. He never seemed bothered to find the disorder she left behind. The most she’d gleaned was that his initials were K. R. and that he possessed a collection of esoterica she would have loved a chance to rifle through at length: little glass baubles and cubes, mirrors of various sizes, a set of bells, bundles of twine-tied candles, a thin brass rod. There was even a wooden apothecary box belonging to someone with the initials B. S., which contained an array of dried plants and peculiar powders.

Some of these things were familiar, but when she tried to think of why, she was met only with a mental fog. As for the little booklet he was always scribbling away in, which must have been a diary, Mr. K. R. (or perhaps B. S.?) kept that well-hidden in an interior pocket of his clothing and thus out of her reach—otherwise she’d have read that too and no doubt figured out what he wanted by now.

Judging by the large copper basin he’d dragged into the kitchen, what he wanted  _ now _ , as in this exact moment, was a bath. Rey swore the only reason she remained so near as he prepared the water was to have a chance to get at that coveted diary, which he would have to cast aside along with his clothing. He couldn’t possibly bathe with the thing. He slept with it, true, but everyone had reasonable limits.

The tub stood nearly full by the hearth, where a fire roared beneath the final pot of water he’d drawn from the stream just past the edge of the garden walls. She wondered if he had run across the river nymphs; they took to sleeping most of the time in the cold seasons and were cantankerous as bears if roused. He certainly looked as if he had been through an ordeal. Sweat shone on his brow . . . and on his forearms, for he had discarded his coat and rolled his sleeves to the elbow, and on what little she could see of his chest, where the front of his shirt hung open in a way that drew her eye.

For a man who gave her more the impression of a scholar than a laborer, he had quite a vigorous form.

His form was not what she needed to be paying attention to. The real problem was that he had not yet shed his vest, and she knew the diary must be tucked right away close to his body, for she had searched his coat during his last caper out of doors and not found it there. Rey gave a huff of chilly frustration and tore her eyes from him where he stood at the window contemplating the garden. The tub looked inviting, with steam rising in lazy tendrils and the copper glinting warmly in the firelight.

She stole up to it, secure that he would not see her as she crouched beside it and stretched her hand out over the water. Her palm made contact and caused the slightest disturbance—tiny, almost invisible ripples. Yet there was nothing else to it. Rey felt the slight resistance of the water, but it was an empty sensation. There was no heat. She could not smell the metal or the cake of creamy soap. Her perception of ‘wet’ was limited to her ability to state that it felt different from the air, or the ground, or the fire. 

Her hand was sunk to the wrist when she became aware that the man had drawn up to the other side of the tub. She stared at his knees, abashed, then flicked her eyes upward. His shirt was open further. The vest was gone. Her mouth tightened, her eyes darted around—the vest, where had he left it?—and then back to him. 

He was undressing. She had pointedly avoided intruding on such moments the past few nights. Why was she suddenly conflicted about deferring to his modesty? She should wait until he was submerged, find the diary, and go. Rey drew her hand back from the water, leaving more telling ripples in her wake.

“Do you even feel that?” he asked.

“Oh!” 

Her shock was such that she could not utter more than that single useless syllable as she straightened up and skittered away from the basin. He was addressing her, that was clear, yet she could not believe it. Rey looked behind her, right, left, behind the man. No one in the room but him. And her.

She was accustomed to his voice. He spoke to himself often, even in his sporadic periods of sleep. She found its sound singular and quite pleasing. Yet to be spoken to directly was disarming.

“You see me,” she said, aware that it sounded like an accusation. 

“I could always see you.” The admission sent a tightness through her. His right hand rose to the button right over his heart, toyed with it, then left it alone. The corners of his lips twitched. “Although I’ve never seen a ghost blush before.”

She drew herself up, hands planted on her hips. 

“I’m not—” But she was. She hadn’t noticed it somehow, but her body was filled with the soft flush of warmth that came with heightened emotion. She could not recall the last time she had experienced such a thing. That it was possible at all vexed her greatly. “If I am, that makes two of us, sir.”

Rey was pleased to see his small, smug smile falter. The color in his face was not the product of exertion, nor was it a trick of the firelight. He cleared his throat and clasped his hands in front of him.

“Were you planning to watch me?”

“No!” Her answer was too quick, too forceful. “I was . . . I was going to look through your pockets as you soaked.”

To her surprise, his even expression cracked again, this time with a sharp burst of mirthless laughter. “You’re a pickpocket spirit, are you? Is that where all the fine things in this house come from?”

“I’m not,” she said. “And don’t be ridiculous. I can’t very well pickpocket my way to a piano or a set of encyclopedias. Everything in this house has always been here. All I wanted was to see whatever it is you’ve been writing all this time.”

“Ah, so just a nosy spirit.” 

“Stop calling me that. My name is Rey.”

He nodded, impassive again. “Well, you are right, Rey. The previous owner left it all behind.”

“Then why feign ignorance?”

“To see if you would lie to me.”

"I don't see why I should. It’s not as if you can hurt me.”

The man shrugged and circled around closer to the fire until he was near enough to touch her. He did not try to do so, but his proximity caused more of that curious warmth to wash through her anyway. She liked the feeling so much. If she had ever experienced it before, she could not recall.

Rey moved a few steps away despite her desire to remain close. “I’ve given you my name. And you’re intruding in my home. I think it only polite you tell me yours.”

It seemed as if he might argue, but then his eyes flickered. 

“You may call me Kylo Ren.”

No  _ ‘ _ My name is’; only ‘You may call me.’ What a cheat.

“You know many things about this place?” she asked.

“I consider research part of what I have been tasked to do by my employer.”

“And what is that, exactly?”

He looked at her for a few moments, then leaned against the hearth. “I’m a necromancer. I’ve been hired to expel the spirit that haunts this place.”

“Expel. Lovely.” Rey wondered at her own lack of alarm. Now she understood, so maybe she should have been afraid after all, yet she wasn’t. “You can’t. This is my home.”

“No, it’s not. You think it is,” Kylo said, “because something keeps you here. Some memory, or attachment. Your past. But this isn’t your home. Your home is beyond. I’m going to help you get there.”

Now she felt an emotion rising, but it was not fear or sadness—it was anger. Rey hated his presumption, his cool tone, and the way he seemed to think he knew everything about her. She hated the way his eyes and voice and face were both sharp and soft in a way that made him impossible to hate. A tightness balled behind her chest, hard and unyielding as stone. 

“What if I don’t want to go?”

“Then I have ways to make you.” A fact, not a threat. There was no menace whatsoever in his voice, just tired resignation. Somehow that made it worse. “But I’d rather reason with you. Work with you. I do not like to resort to underhanded methods.”

“I’m not interested.”

She turned to go but halted at the sound of him saying her name.

“Rey. Listen to me.” She obliged his request, though she refused to look at him. “If you insist on remaining here, you will fade. A little more every year. What do you remember of your life?”

Rey flinched and set her jaw. “That’s not your business.”

“You’ll lose pieces of yourself a bit at a time. Memories. Experiences. Then more. You will grow transparent. Your mind will unspool. Your sense of identity will crumble to dust. You’ll become a wisp chained to unthinking routine. Until you’re nothing.” 

He was right behind her, and she considered turning to strike him. But the sun had not yet set—her fist would only slip right through him. 

“You’ll be nothing,” he uttered.

She felt her chest rise with what would have been a shaky breath. Her lungs, in whatever form they existed now, expanded and shrank, just an empty reflex. The illusion of life. The reminder was like a hand around her throat.

“Let me help you,” Kylo said quietly.

The solidity of his body behind her was maddening. It was too easy to imagine the heat of life suffusing his skin, warming the air close to him. How she wished to absorb just the impression of it.

“You’re not doing this to help me. You’re doing it to get paid.”

He hummed. “I’m allowed my reasons.”

With a dismissive sigh, Rey marched away, toward the wall separating the kitchen from the dining room. She remembered his silly scatterings of salt at the doorways in the east wing and the fading aura of burnt clary sage in the main parlor a few nights ago. He had meant them to keep her from going where she wished—yet they had failed. This man knew far less than he thought. Soon he would realize that, and then he would leave.

She would be alone again. That was all right. That was good.

She chuckled bitterly and stepped through the wall. “Enjoy your bath.”

  
  


⊖

  
  


The next night, he followed her out to the garden. The cold air chapped his nose and cheeks and bit the tips of his fingers. It was a bracing reminder that he was alive and that the gulf between himself and Rey was real, no matter how she interested him. After their confrontation in the kitchen, he had given her space. He had kept a respectful distance as he worked. During his perambulations of the household, he had intentionally avoided those rooms in which he sensed her presence. Yet Kylo’s perception of her only grew stronger, and he was ever-aware that she was nearby. He wondered if she felt it too.

As a result, this was the first time he had made any sort of overture, and he was surprised at how she tolerated his presence. Perhaps she was simply too absorbed in her work to care. Perhaps—but he thought she did care. He thought, indeed, that Rey was showing off now that she knew she had an audience. 

She moved through the garden with the same strident confidence she possessed in the house. She watered, pruned, and shaped her way through narrow winding paths of greenery and branches that leaned low to form tangled, thickety tunnels overhead. As she worked, she whispered quietly to some of the plants or herself and sometimes hummed snatches of a pleasant tune. Kylo could not say that he knew it, but he did like the sound of her voice rising and falling through wordless notes, low and warm in the crisp late-autumn air.

Watching her, along with the experience of being in the garden, was having a clarifying effect on him. As much as he enjoyed the house itself—for it  _ was _ beautiful and full of things to see—being inside of it for days on end made him forget what he was doing there at all. He struggled to focus, his head too full of pointed reminders of his purpose, like tripping over his own feet. Sleeping was increasingly difficult. Fears he hadn’t had since he was a child crept back and kept his eyes wide in the dark.

Out here, though . . . it was one thing to see the garden from any of the windows above, and another to be fully immersed in its improbability. The flowers should not have been blossoming. The trees should have been bare. The grass smelled of spring. And all of it was not merely alive—it was  _ too  _ alive. The fragrance was heady and thick, the petals nearly shining. The leaves moved in a breeze that was not there. Moths and bats looped about as if intoxicated. He could feel the reaching, stretching flow of plant vitality, roots spanning deep underground, vines and blooms bathing in the airy moonlight. Their energy marched beneath his skin as well.

Rey herself, dappled with shadow under the moon, seemed to glow with life. The soft distortion of her shape was gone, her cheeks were tinged with a pretty pink, her hair shone, and her eyes were brighter. The sweet aroma of the flowers and earth might have been the perfume of her skin. She looked content, the strained sadness he often saw in her expression dispelled. In the moon garden, she might have been some mythic figure, some Demeter or Selene, free and unbothered among her charges.

This was not the first time Kylo found himself falling prey to such poetic thoughts of her, but it was the first that made him wish to act. He abandoned his post on the stone bench beneath a willow and made his way toward a trellised path down which she had just disappeared.

“So have you grown tired of watching me?” she asked as he approached. She showed no sign of worry at his presence. “Have you decided to  _ make me  _ leave, necromancer?”

He knew she was being ironic, perhaps trying to provoke a reaction. His attempts to bind her continued to yield no results. Though a particularly aggressive move at banishment might serve better, he continued to see it as a last resort.

“No, I haven’t,” he said. “Neither of those things. I think you can be made to see reason.”

Rey drew aside just enough to allow him to walk beside her. A wry twist of her lips dimpled her cheek. “How generous of you.”

“Generosity is not something toward which I often find myself inclined.” 

Kylo cleared his throat and slipped his hands into his pockets as they emerged from the enclosed path and turned down a gravel lane lined with white and purple flowers. 

“These are tuberose,” he said after a moment, nudging a few blooms with his fingers. “And devil’s trumpet?”

“Yes.” She glanced at him, then paused and touched one of the tuberose blooms, rubbing the waxy petals gently between her fingers. “There are primroses too, a bit further along.”

He looked down the path, spying the petals of the primroses she indicated, sunny yellow even in the dark.

“You garden at night because it’s the only time you can touch things in the world of the living.”

Rey regarded him with another one of her careful looks, then lifted her chin. “When the sun sets, the world comes alive for me. A little, at least. This petal, these leaves, they’re . . . so soft. So smooth. I used to be able to smell them too. It’s harder lately. I forget . . .” Her brow twitched. She shook her head and released the flower to continue on. “And inside the house it’s just the same. I can touch whatever I like. Pick things up. Move them around.”

“Go rummaging through my private property,” he added with a tight smile.

“Of course.” She sounded amused. “I can keep the place clean. Play the piano. Read books in the library. Make it all look like a home.” Her tone fell, voice strained even as she played at nonchalance. “And in the day I can’t feel much of anything at all.”

“I’ve never encountered a ghost like that. Either a spirit can touch things, like a poltergeist, or they cannot. It’s not . . . what you’re describing is irregular.”

“You say that like a compliment.”

“It’s unusual. I find it interesting.”

Rey groaned unhappily.

“What?” he asked.

“I keep hoping you will lose interest and leave. Not find me  _ more  _ interesting.”

“I find your  _ nature  _ interesting. Not you,” Kylo protested, aware the statement was not entirely true. “This is my work.”

She only hummed skeptically and skimmed her hand over the heads of a primrose cluster. As their bobbing subsided, their scent filled the air such that he had to breathe through his mouth for a few moments, puffing thick clouds of steam before his face. He would need to bring a scarf with him next time he came out here.

“Have you encountered many spirits, then?”

The earnestness in her question surprised him. “Yes. Of all varieties.”

“How long have you practiced necromancy?”

“Nearly nine years.”

“And why?”

He was beginning to feel as if he was being interrogated—yet no one had asked him these questions in a very long time. He hadn’t realized until now how much he’d wished someone would.

“It’s a family trade, in a sense,” he began. When Rey only waited, he offered a vague elaboration. “My mother’s family has produced a great number of individuals with the Sight. She and my uncle rose to some prominence in New York Spiritualist societies after the Civil War, but as I grew older I decided their focus was not what I wished to pursue. They were much displeased when I declared my intent to sail to England and learn the art of necromancy instead.”

Having the Sight was rare, but it was considered a benign, useful skill. On the other hand, those who elected to develop it in such a way as to allow them to pass at will between the realms of the living and the dead and meddle with what they found there were regarded with suspicion even in the most high-minded of social circles.

With the benefit of hindsight, Kylo supposed his mother’s protestations were born of love and not entirely unfounded. No mother would rejoice at the news her only child wished to take an occupation associated with addiction and degeneracy, madness and short life. Such a slew of ills, many reasoned, were the peril of living one’s life in such close proximity to death. At times, Kylo did not find these misconceptions entirely inaccurate. Yet those who fell prey to those risks were weak-willed and negligent. He was not.

He ran a hand through his hair and blew more steam between his pursed lips. “I don’t think they quite knew what to do with me, so despite their reservations, they did not argue.”

“B. S.,” she said.

“What?”

“The initials on your apothecary chest. Are those your mother’s? Uncle’s?”

“Oh. No, they’re mine.” 

Kylo wasn’t sure what compelled him to answer truthfully. Names had power, in his field more than most. And yet . . . 

“My given name is Benedict.” He shrugged as if shaking a bothersome insect away. “Ben, really.”

“That’s a very good name.” He felt a flush creep up his neck as she peered at him; he looked away, focusing hard on the crackled trunk of a fragrant pear tree. “Why change it?”

“I didn’t want my family’s reputation to follow me down my chosen path. Frankly, I think they appreciate it as much as I do.”

Rey was silent for long enough that he wondered if she had walked off. Yet when he checked on her, she was standing beside him with a distant expression, as if the thin astral veil that obscured her in the day had dropped back down somewhere behind her eyes. She blinked, and the light returned to her gaze, along with new clarity.

“I think—” She broke off and pressed her lips together—her whole face compressed a little, in fact, in a way that was rather endearing. “I think I . . . I must have been like that. Like you, I mean. I saw things, when I was alive. I saw spirits. Ghosts. In the—erm. Wherever it was I grew up, I can’t . . .” Her frustration was as clear as her hesitance. “Since I was small.”

“Do you still see others? In this house? Elsewhere? Perhaps the man who lived here. Professor San Tekka.”

“No. I’m alone here.”

Kylo had not been expecting any sort of breakthrough to come of their rambling talk of his past, but this was good. It gave him something to work with. A hint of what kept her bound here and the way to help her move beyond. It took a great deal of self control not to press her for more, yet he could tell that her stilted speech was not a symptom of deceit. She simply could not remember it all. There was time yet.

He was lost in ruminations of what might come next when her voice startled him, though he missed her words.

“What did you say?”

“May I call you Ben?” she repeated. Her voice was steady and firm again.

“If you prefer it, I suppose I can’t stop you.”

“Do  _ you _ prefer it?”

“I . . .” 

Kylo frowned and dug his hands deeper into the pockets of his coat. There was still a tiny line of frustration between her brows, and he wanted to smooth it away with a finger. Would such a gesture deepen the rare, beautiful flush of her face in the moonlight? 

He would not try to find out.

“Yes. That will do.”

“Good.” Her eyes dropped to his pockets, as if she was searching for something or contemplating another question. “I’ll show you more of the garden, if you like. You can tell me what you think of the night phlox. It has been a long time since I’ve been able to smell them. They used to be my favorite.”

Side by side, they continued silently down the path.


	2. What Was Left Behind

“You’re awake. I’m sorry. I come here to read some nights. That’s all.” 

Rey cut her apology short, even as she hovered uncertainly at the door of the study. What did she have to be sorry about? She was not the interloper. Ben was the one who had let himself in a week ago. Ben was the one who now sat in her favorite reading chair, the soft, worn leather one, the one beside the stained-glass window she liked so much, reading the old master’s books the way she often did. He sat there in his braces and shirtsleeves, at his leisure with a modest fire going in the fireplace and a few candles lit. The lamps were cold and dark.

She narrowed her eyes at him and strode into the room. 

“But you know that already, don’t you.”

Ben chuffed but didn’t look up from his reading. “As you say.”

In truth, she had not come to the study to read, nor had she come there ignorant of his presence. She’d been drawn by a smell. Not a strong one, but enough that she’d practically come running for the chance to bask in it. As she stood before one of the bookcases, searching for the novel she’d been reading last, she peeked over at him. On the small table beside the chair was a tray with a china coffee pot and a matching cup. She recognized it from a narrow cabinet in the kitchen but had never had reason to take it out.

The smell of coffee, deadened as it was to her, was intoxicating. Bitter, sharp, and rich. Rey distractedly pulled her book from the shelf and sidled up to Ben.

“You’re in my seat,” she told him, swatting the spine of her book a few times against her palm.

He placed a thumb in his own book to hold his place, then looked up at her. He was wearing a small pair of reading spectacles that looked a bit comical on his long nose. “There are others.”

“Yes, but this is the one I use. Don’t be annoying.”

“Truly?”

She only raised her eyebrows at him. His gaze landed on the chair opposite—identical in every way, except that it was not the one she favored. He heaved an exaggerated sigh and rose to resituate himself in the other chair, and as Rey curled up gratefully in her proper place (ignoring how much she enjoyed the way his body had left the leather hot and supple), he made a noisy fuss of moving the coffee set to the other table before settling in again with his own reading. 

“Thank you,” she said.

He shook his head impassively, took a sip of his coffee, and must have caught the longing in her brief glance.

“Would you rather I not drink this with you here?”

“Why would I?”

“Because you can’t . . .” Ben’s lips compressed as his jaw gave a little squirm. “I imagine you must miss it. If you miss other sensations. Eating, that is. Taste.”

Rey realized she was staring at his lips and thinking a good deal about tasting things that were not strictly coffee. His mouth was pretty. Soft as petals, she bet. She forced her eyes to the coffee set and thought instead of the precious hint of that smell.

“It’s been a long time, that’s all. I don’t really think about it much.” She gave him a small smile. “That does smell wonderful though.”

“It is. I shouldn’t be drinking it at this hour, but I wouldn’t be sleeping anyway.”

She knew that. The last few nights, she’d heard him about in other rooms or seen his shape in the window when she was outside. It made her wish he would join her again in the garden. Mostly it made her wonder what kept him up and if he was getting enough sleep to sustain himself.

“You should enjoy it,” she quipped, “while you can.”

That earned her a short laugh. She felt like she was full of fluttering moths. Ben sipped his coffee again, then cocked his head.

“What are you reading?”

“Oh.” Rey looked down, as if she had forgotten. Mostly, she was befuddled by his interest. It wasn’t the sort of question he usually asked her. It felt companionable rather than useful. “ _ Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea _ . Jules Verne. Have you heard of him?”

“Yes. You like adventure stories?”

“Evidently.”

He snickered. “Have you read  _ The Mysterious Island _ ?”

“I only have what was left behind.”

Ben appeared to be doing some calculation. “Ah. Right. It would have been published a touch too late, I think. You might have liked it. Captain Nemo himself makes an appearance.” He shifted uneasily in his chair. “San Tekka had quite a collection, didn’t he?”

“I’ve read nearly everything in this room and the library in the west wing.” It was a silly point of pride, but she had never had someone to share it with before. “I suppose I’ll start again when I’ve finished.”

She supposed by then she might not remember the first things she had read anyway. The thought made her feel cold and empty as the lamps, like she might blow away. “What are you reading, then?”

“Carroll,  _ Through the Looking Glass _ .”

“I’ve read it.”

Many times. She kept coming back to it, as often as once or twice a year. It was commonplace that some books should speak to a person more than others; she had always been drawn to the ones that took her far away.

“My mother used to read it to me if I couldn’t sleep,” Ben said. “I’m not convinced it didn’t make things worse—I always found the Jabberwocky passages rather troubling. Too many biting jaws and catching claws.” 

“ _ One-two, one-two; and through and through the vorpal blade went snicker-snack _ ,” she recited. “You see? I haven’t lost my mind yet. If I can recall all sorts of nonsense passages.”

“That does not prove your case as much as you think,” he said, though his tone was teasing.

“Perhaps not.” 

To her right, a cold rain pattered lightly on the windows, leaving a light rime of condensation on the glass. She drew a fingertip down one of the cool colored panes, tracing the word ‘hello'. It melted away slowly. The fire snapped.

“You don’t sleep well here, either,” she remarked. “Not just tonight.”

His expression closed off, and she feared she had snapped them both right back to professional reticence. An inexplicably terrifying thought. 

“I don’t.” Ben regarded her with curiosity, and she could tell he was making a decision. “When I was a boy, I used to slip out of my body when I slept. Not all the time, but often enough that it became a problem.”

Fascinated, Rey leaned forward, stocking feet tucked beneath her skirt. “Where did you go?”

“There are many names for it. Necromancers know it as the Vespertine. It’s the astral space between the realm of the dead and the realm of the living. An etheric plane.”

“Yes, I know of that. The idea, at least. And so you just . . . slipped in?”

“It’s not uncommon for children with the Sight. Children haven’t yet learned how to ignore the things they would prefer not to acknowledge,” he said. “But it happened more often to me than most. I thought they were dreams. Or nightmares. The spirits I encountered there were not always benevolent.”

Rey felt a pang. “I suppose not.”

“I became afraid to sleep. My mother eventually realized what was happening, and my uncle . . . He had dabbled in mesmerism for some years. He made me forget the things that troubled me. I stopped slipping, but I was never in control until I began to study necromancy.”

“And that taught you control?”

“I learned to sharpen my Sight until it became something I can wield like a knife. When I enter Vespertine space now, it is only because I intend to do so.” 

There was something he was not saying, she thought, but it was impossible to speculate what it was. The realization made her feel out of sorts and irritable. She resorted to a question she thought he might answer.

“Why do they want this house?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been hired to make me leave, so there must be a reason someone wants me gone. The house has been empty for as long as I can recall. The only people who come here do so on a lark.”

Ben sighed and slid his book onto the table. “It’s to be made into a school. That’s all I know.”

His voice was terse and disapproving.

“You don’t like the idea,” she said.

“No, not particularly. I think this would be a terrible place for a school. But I haven’t been hired to make wise men of idiots.”

“A wise man might have realized by now that I’m not going anywhere.” She returned his questioning look with a benign smile. “Why do you think it would be unsuitable?”

Ben hunkered back in his chair, long legs stretched out, as if he had given up all hope of reading and was settling in for a long conversation. “This property sits on a thin place.”

The words gave her that feeling of being full of fluttering wings again, but much less pleasantly. This time the wings belonged to flies, all buzzing gossamer and poking wire legs, seeking soft, rotten things. 

His eyes flickered. “You know that term?”

“I’m not sure. No. Maybe.”

“It’s a spot where the material that separates the living and the dead is . . . well, thinner. The balance of life and death behaves in strange ways on both sides. It is why your garden grows so vigorously despite the cold and never dies. It’s why nothing in this house has decayed with no one to properly maintain it.”

Rey fought the urge to be offended at that last point. No one to maintain it indeed—she was a  _ wonderful _ warden.

“It’s why you are afraid to sleep here,” she ventured. “It’s easier to slip.”

“I’m not afraid. And I don’t slip.” His jaw tightened. “Thin places are rare. Useful, in my work. It is easier to summon long-gone spirits and interface with the beyond. But in a place of learning it would be a sure hazard.”

“Ah.” She worried her lip and forced her hands to stop their nervous fidgeting in her lap. “I wonder . . .”

“Yes?”

“If that is why I’m able to exist here in the peculiar state you say I do.”

“I have wondered that too. It could be.” His eyes on her were probing. “You truly remember so little of your life? You can’t have haunted this place more than a quarter century—the house has stood empty barely longer than that.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“Spirits remember their lives for many decades after passing from their bodies. Centuries, even. They know why they stay.” She gave no answer, so he pressed, “Perhaps you were employed by the professor. A kitchen girl, or a maid? You’re very sharp-witted—a research assistant?”

Rey shook her head. She had that feeling again of floating away. She was somewhere else, but she was there in the study too. She did not want to be in that other place. Little white spots floated in her vision until she blinked them away.

“No. I’ve always been here. That is, I don’t remember where I came from before this. But . . .” 

She looked at him warily. He had trusted her with things about himself. His name. His history. He held no power over her. 

“I do know why I stay here,” she confessed. “I’m . . . waiting for my family. That’s all. My parents, and . . . and my little brother. I think. He was so small the last time I saw him. But I remember, I _do. _And when their spirits arrive, we will move on together. That’s why I don’t need your help. It can’t be so long. Can it?”

She dared to look at him; he was staring at her with such pity her eyes stung. 

“Rey, that’s not how this works.” 

“You don’t know that.”

“I know that you have no reason to stay  _ here _ . You have no personal attachment to this house. No family has ever called it home. If yours were trying to find you— _ if _ —they have no reason to seek you out here, in either realm. What is it about this place?”

“It's the only thing I’m sure of. The last thing I know.” 

Rey ducked her head, feeling as if she might cry. Her throat throbbed. All sense of warmth was sucked from the room. The smell of his coffee taunted her and turned her stomach. She glared at the floor and bit her tongue until the urge to scream subsided. 

“Please, stop trying to force me to remember. You can’t.”

If Ben wanted to continue, which he must have, he denied himself. He slumped a bit in the chair, chin dipped, and looked at her beneath furrowed brow and dark eyelashes. She knew she had frustrated him. He did that lip-pressing wiggle of his jaw again, then nodded curtly and reached for his book.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” he muttered, and began to read.

She had no intention to do so. Already the twist of near panic she had felt at his questioning was fading, replaced by the satisfaction of being in one of her favorite spots, with a favorite book, and with him. A thought nibbled at her, though, tricky as a ferret, and she couldn’t catch it.

Rey was reaching for her Verne when Ben spoke.

“ _ There was a book lying near Alice on the table, and while she sat watching the White King—for she was still a little anxious about him, and had the ink all _ —”

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Reading to you.”

She bit back a nervous chuckle. “Yes, I see that. But why?”

“I’ve unsettled you. I should not have. This is the only thing I can think of to mend it.”

“But I’m not . . .” The urge to protest withered. “You could just say you’re sorry.”

“Sorry rarely means anything.”

It was a depressing, cynical take, but what did it matter? He was offering her his voice and attention, which were things she craved more and more of late. She let her novel fall back to the table and curled up in her seat. 

“Well, go on then.”

Her gaze softened and drifted from him to the fire. Outside, the wind drove the rain against the window in an urgent tattoo. Ben was looking at her, reciting from memory alone. She let her eyes close as he resumed.

“ _ She was still a little anxious about him, and had the ink all ready to throw over him, in case he fainted again—she turned over the leaves, to find some part that she could read. For— _ ”

“‘ _ For it’s all in some language I don’t know,’ she said to herself _ ,” Rey supplied.

“ _ It was like this _ .”

  
  


⊖

  
  


The next night, she read to him, and they alternated each night thereafter. Kylo quickly found he preferred to be the listener. He had never much liked the sound of his own voice, and Rey was a marvelous, expressive reader. She altered her tone and timbre for each character and read with a ravenous enthusiasm that made him realize she must have been doing this on her own for years, creating friends as vibrant as the flowers in her garden and just as much a product of her cultivation and care. When they finished Verne and Carroll, they moved on to other works, other activities, for November nights were long and they had nothing but time.

One night she played the piano for him; she was not very good but still better than he was, and she appeared to be delighted when he told her about the invention of the gramophone. Another, they spent hours at games of chess and draw poker at the edge of the garden, even though by sunrise his fingers were numb from the cold and she had beaten him nearly every time. As more days and nights slipped by, living in the house began to feel like the only thing Kylo had ever done. He had forgotten—or perhaps never known at all—what it was like to look forward to seeing another human being as much as he did Rey.

He was fond of her. He would admit it. Had she been living, they could have been friends. Companions. Perhaps something more. A necromancer’s life was one of solitude; the air of death started to cling like soot and kept people away. He could not recall the last time he had indulged in so much as a handshake. Matters of courtship and romance had always been out of the question to him. Yet in those hours with Rey, glimpses of what he might be missing resolved into a pang.

It was an embarrassing, inappropriate realization to own, but there it was. Fitting that she should ultimately be so inaccessible; she was only in need of an ally. He could be that much for her, he decided, and it only made him more determined to help her.

Despite this resolve, his sleep continued to suffer, and what little he did manage was beset by strange visions. Usually he found himself in the garden, but everything was dead and dry and cold, brittle as bone and insubstantial as cobwebs. He walked over a litter of crisped leaves and papery tatters of moth’s wings. Ahead, the pear tree he’d come to admire had withered, the trunk cracked and flaking. The fruits were spoiled brown and pulsed like struggling hearts; when he drew up to one low branch, he saw the movement was caused by translucent worms burrowing in and out. The air was still and thin, so laden with the saccharine miasma of rot he could hardly breathe, as if its influence might cause his own lungs to decay. Life was leached from his veins and slithered out of his pores.

He dreaded what lay on the other side of the tree. Though he was compelled to go and see, he always woke before he could.

It reminded him of those times he used to slip into the Vespertine, the sense of being lost and yet at home. He wasn’t slipping  _ now _ , he couldn’t be, but it felt just the same. Only the familiarity of the house and its ghostly mistress provided adequate distraction from his worries.

And then Kylo discovered the door behind the tapestry. 

First he’d found the map: a floorplan of the house fell out of a drawer one afternoon as he searched for a fresh bottle of ink. It had interested him, as maps and atlases always did, and he’d passed a long lunch perusing it and making notes in his diary. What struck him most was the inclusion of a room he had never been inside, nor seen any sign of whatsoever. He had been in the house for just over two weeks. Long enough to have seen every corner of it many times over.

He was thorough. He  _ had _ seen every room and inspected most of them quite closely. There was no chance he had missed this one small room. The notion haunted him all day, though, and when Rey was out in the garden that night, Kylo made an excursion to the west wing. He had an hour at least until he was meant to meet her in the study.

Feeling rather illicit, he traipsed down the upper level hallway he’d noted on the map, where the door ought to have been. The spot was marked by a heavy woven tapestry, which he had passed many times without paying it much mind. He found it ugly, a ridiculous basket of fat, overwrought flowers all done up in faded thread, and it reminded him of something that ought to be trodden underfoot, not hung up for all to see. It never occurred to him that it might be hiding something. 

Yet sure enough, when he pushed it aside and ducked behind, there it was—a door like any other in the house, dark oak, unremarkable. 

A sharp draft blew from the gap at the bottom. The brass handle was dusty and tarnished. He turned it, but it would not give. Ridiculous. No other door in the place had been locked. Annoyed, Kylo nudged his shoulder up against it and pushed, then pushed again rather harder, then again, and again. Still it refused to budge. He was only making a good deal of noise and ensuring he would have some bruises for his trouble. There had to be a key somewhere, but who knew where that was, and he was not convinced he needed one.

He had taken the tapestry down (the thing was  _ absolutely  _ meant to be a rug) and was stepping back to get in position to give the door a good kick when a furious cry echoed down the hall, followed by the pounding of boots on the floor. He looked just in time to see Rey hurtling toward him, skirts flying, her face taut with horror.

“Don’t touch that!”

Taken by surprise, Kylo backed away from the door and held his hands out placatingly. “Do not fret, it’s only a door.”

“ _ Don’t _ ! Why is— Where is the—?” 

Rey was casting about in a panic, ignoring him. Her eyes landed on the tapestry, and she dragged it up off the floor and began trying to hang it again. While its weight did not appear to trouble her, she was not tall enough to accomplish the task on her own. Her face was red and her eyes watering. He was stricken with the thought that she was about to cry. He had never seen her so beside herself—why did the sight of her face twisted in terror wring at him so?

He did not have time to consider it. Still a storm of anxious movement, Rey threw the tapestry to the floor again and whirled on him. The air around her crackled with a fuzz of electricity.

“Why did you do that?” she demanded through clenched teeth. 

A jolt of heat shot through him. It was a moment before he realized the cause.

Rey was touching him. Her hands were wrapped around his wrists, her knuckles white. She noticed it herself just after he did, gasped, and let him go. A strange look passed over her face. A tear rolled down her cheek, then she swallowed and reached for him again. She brushed the back of his stiffened hands with her fingertips, tracing the slightly raised veins, almost as if she hoped to detect his pulse. Her fingers were cold but filled him with the same familiar warmth their first touch had.

Making physical contact with a spirit, in whatever form they took and on whatever plane, was understood to be an unpleasant experience, often likened to dousing oneself in freezing water, or having the breath sucked out of one’s lungs, or being covered all over with writhing grubs. Kylo had done so only once or twice in his career and never on purpose. Neither occasion had made him want to do it again.

Touching Rey was nothing like that. The chill was already fading from her fingertips. Her skin—for he had taken one of her hands in his own without even thinking—was soft as powder. She felt alive. He knew she wasn’t, that this was a temporary state, an effect of the time and the house’s location. She was spirit matter, ether and light and shadow, not flesh and blood.

But it was difficult to remember that. It was difficult to think at all. His life force flared in response to the energy that gave her shape, desperate to be joined to it. He didn’t want to let her go. 

“Why . . .” Rey’s brow dipped, and her fingers tightened against his. Her voice was unsteady but low and serious. “Stay away from that room.”

He managed to tear his eyes from hers long enough to look at the door. 

“What is the matter with th—” 

“Ben, please. It’s a bad place. I don’t like the feeling it gives me.” She searched his face, eyes still shining. If another tear escaped he was not confident he could resist the urge to sweep it away. He was not confident he wouldn’t bring that tear to his lips to see if it tasted of salt, if it was really wet, if it was real at all. Her expression shifted from fear to incredulity. “You don’t sense it?”

“It seems no different to me than the rest of the house. It’s only a room. Not even a room—a  _ door _ .”

A door that hid a room he’d never seen because it was covered up.  _ She _ had covered it up. Which meant there was something there he probably needed to see. It might be the thing he needed to know to free her. Or it could be nothing.

Her nails were digging into his palms. That felt real too. There would be marks left behind on his skin.

“Forget you saw it,” she said. “And help me cover it back up. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to know it’s there.”

He ran his thumbs over her knuckles a few times, savoring the feeling of each ridge of bone. It appeared to soothe her only a little, but she glanced down at their joined hands as if noticing them again for the first time. 

“I forgot what it felt like to touch another person. It’s been . . . I don’t know how long,” she murmured. “I did not think you would let me.”

She could not have been more mistaken. Even expecting discomfort, even in spite of the impropriety, he would have allowed it if she’d asked. 

“What is it like?”

“Warm. You’re so warm. I knew that, but I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to feel it myself.” She spoke as if confiding an embarrassing secret. “I tried.”

“You don’t . . .” 

He almost told her she didn’t feel dead, she didn’t feel like a ghost. A backhanded compliment, at best. His blood was racing. The wool of his waistcoat itched even through his shirt. 

“You could do it again,” he said. “Whenever you like. If you wished. If it feels good to you.”

God in heaven, what sort of thing was  _ that _ to say to a young lady?

Her mouth twitched, and her eyes flicked to his throat. “That’s . . . erm. Yes. It does.” 

Her fingers squeezed, then released his hands. She didn’t appear to know what to do with her own. Abruptly, she dropped down to retrieve the tapestry, all business once again. 

“Help me with this. We must cover the door. Forget—”

“Forget I saw it, I know.”

They rehung the tapestry and retired to the study for a game of checkers and a few chapters of a book on the rain forests of South America. For the first time, they did not sit in the arm chairs by the fire. Instead they took up on the sofa, together, and he could not say which of them made the decision to do so. It was less comfortable than the chairs and more cramped, though perhaps that was its appeal. She was pressed lightly against his arm by the end of the first chapter; her stockinged feet were tucked up on the sofa and warming the side of his thigh by the end of the second. Her toes idly flexed and curled against the fabric of his trousers.

He told himself the contact was merely interesting. It was yet another thing that made her the most unusual ghost he had ever encountered (and, to anyone who might look in, certainly an immodest one, to be cuddled up to a man to whom she was neither engaged nor wed), and it was worthy of note for research reasons. But already he dreaded the moment she drew away or, worse, when the sun rose and the warmth of her body faded to a puff of air.

As Rey read to him of poison frogs and exotic fruits and rushing river rapids, she was so composed and like her usual self, brusque and bright, that it seemed to Kylo she had forgotten all about his earlier trespass with the hidden room. In fact, he thought she had, by some quirk of the house, done exactly that. Would that he could do the same. 

His mind returned to that door behind the tapestry. It was a sobering reminder of the task he had come to perform. He was already working out when he could go back and see what lay on the other side.


	3. The Thin Place

His opportunity came the next day at midmorning. Although Rey did not sleep, she did need periods of time to concentrate her energy or else she became listless and, for lack of a better word, prickly. It was her custom to rest in the morning, after her most active hours had passed. At the moment, she was doing so in the study where they’d spent most of the night. 

Though she was curled up in her reading chair now, eyes shut, body very still and soft at the edges, just a few hours ago they had been on the sofa. Kylo had been dozing and woke to a profound sense of loss. The night had fled, and the feel of her had done the same. Her head resting on his shoulder as she watched the sun rise had had as much weight and substance as shadow. She’d smiled at him tiredly, and her face had been so close to his he wondered if something might happen—but she only got to her feet and wandered out, moody and wordless, leaving the scent of pear and primrose behind.

This was the memory that hounded him as he stole back toward that west wing corridor again, trying to keep his sense of guilt at bay and his sense of professionalism foremost in his mind. He was not betraying a promise. He had made none—simply agreed to forget, which was as impossible as neglecting the reason he stayed. She had to know that. She  _ knew _ what he had come to do. Unless . . .

Was she trying to distract him from his purpose by winning him over with kindness, conversation, and hints of what could be?

No, that was impossible. Spirits could be manipulative and self-interested, but Rey was not those things. She was stubborn. She wanted to protect what she thought was hers. Yet Kylo could not believe that she would resort to deceit to do so. Unlike himself, right now, sneaking off to stand in front of the tapestry he had helped her to rehang barely twelve hours ago. Perhaps he did deserve to feel guilty.

He set his bag down on the floor, removed the tapestry from the wall, and got to work on the lock. Asking Rey if she knew where the key might be was out of the question, and he would not risk drawing her attention with brute force as he had the last time. This morning, he had come prepared: he reached into his waistcoat pocket and retrieved one of his father’s old skeleton keys. He checked the hall one last time, slipped the key into the lock until he felt it nudge past the wards, and gave it a practiced turn. It opened with a click.

The sound made Kylo shiver with satisfaction, but he paused to take a breath and stared at the door, collecting himself. He knew that what he found on the other side might be troubling. When ghosts guarded a secret as viciously as Rey did, especially when they seemed to have no precise idea of what that secret  _ was _ , it was often something too terrible to admit even to themselves. Murder. Trauma. Bodies in the walls, under the floorboards, tell-tale hearts. Things like this were always darkly titillating in novels, on the stage, or in the newspapers—in actual fact, less so. 

It was an eventuality he was always prepared for when he took jobs like this one. He’d just hoped better for Rey. He did not want to cause her pain with dark truths dredged up against her will.

Yet when he opened the door, the room he found before him was not immediately disturbing. It was dusty and somewhat small and smelled stale, for there were no windows, so he could not get a good look at it until he had lit the lamps along the walls. As his eyes adjusted and the details settled over him, a prickle of unease swept his skin.

The walls to his right and left were lined with mirrors of varying shapes and sizes, as if they had been gathered from all over the house, dragged there, and lined up as neatly as possible. One was broken, though the missing glass was swept into a corner. The wall immediately in front of him was more unnerving still. The busily patterned paper was scored with perhaps hundreds of short, straight tally marks. On the floor, shoved into another corner with a pile of cushions that made him think someone must have once slept there, was a shallow bowl. He crouched down to look at it and saw a series of water stains along the rim. It was a cheap scrying bowl, probably bought in a curiosity shop, long dried up. Lines of white chalk were smudged and faded around his feet; some seemed to have been drawn between the mirrors, though it was difficult to tell their original trajectory. 

He rose slowly. The space in this room was very, very thin—almost torn. He would hardly need to focus his Sight to see to the other side. Slipping through, into the Vespertine or even farther beyond, would be hardly more difficult. He quashed the morbid excitement that urged him to proceed headlong. The places where it was easiest to slip were often the ones where it was most dangerous to do so without taking care. 

Whoever had last been in this room had not taken care.

Kylo got to work immediately. Though Rey would be restoring herself for a few more hours, he did not want to waste a moment. He would slip into the Vespertine, see what echoes the room held there, and return to his body with plenty of time to lock the room back up and throw the tapestry over the door. As for what came after that, well . . . that was entirely dependent on what he found.

Ignoring the castoffs of the previous occupant’s activities, he knelt down in the middle of the room, removed his coat and vest, then loosened his cuffs and collar. He poured a thin ring of salt and situated himself on the floor at its center. The apothecary box was next. He lifted it from his bag and raised the lid to gaze down at the neat rows of bottles, boxes, and envelopes. Tinctures and mixtures of dried herbs and flowers, careful blends of minerals and purified water, and balancing agents to mitigate the toxicity of those that would open his Sight to what had already come to pass and make the tether between his flesh and spirit supple and resilient. Kylo would trick his body into believing it was near death—and then he would leave it behind.

He measured out only what was needed, tipped it down his throat, closed his eyes. As he waited, he began to wish he had rolled a cigarette first. Even as the salvia and devil’s trumpet began to take hold, his nerves were jumping, his heart racing and then slowing, and God, this was the part he hated most: the sensation of losing all control before his awareness condensed into a pinpoint of purest clarity. 

The room wobbled. He wobbled in return. A cold sweat slid like ice down his temples, his neck, right between his shoulder blades. Each breath was a labor he was uncertain he would complete. He focused on the one-two-inhale-exhale of his lungs as the lamps guttered and then glowed too brightly. There was light everywhere, even inside him. He was breathing light. He  _ was _ light. His body was a heavy, clumsy thing growing cold and limp. It wanted him to get up and run; it wanted him to lie down and sleep. 

Kylo’s eyes rolled, and a faint vibration sang through him, as if someone had just struck a tuning fork behind his eyes and knocked something loose. His sense of his surroundings was immediately altered, and he stood. Breathing was easy now. The room had dimmed and become soft, but his vision was clearer than ever. There was a consistent, pleasurable buzz beneath his skin. He took a few steps. His shoes made no sound on the parquet. 

On the other side, his body was still and prone, cradled in the cold clutch of a deep trance state. Looking down, he could just make out the shape of it on the floor, a thin shadow hunched at his feet. He had about two hours before it began to return to equilibrium and draw him back. That would give him just enough time to recover and make as if he had not come to the room at all before Rey sought him out. 

The thing he needed to see was nearby. He knew it with the same disinterested certainty with which he knew his own name. Kylo walked up to one of the mirrors. Its surface was blank but benign.

“Show me,” he told it, “what I have come here to see.”

The glass shimmered, and then it was gone. In its place was a dimly shining doorway. He stepped through and found himself outdoors, in the weak sunlight of a late-autumn morning not unlike the one he’d left behind. 

It  _ was _ the one he’d left behind, he realized. A shadow of it. He was in Rey’s garden. The flowers slept, shyly curled in on themselves, petals furled tight, and as he passed they shrank away from him. By the time he had come to the central path he knew something was wrong. The smell tipped him off first—that same sweet decay from his dreams. 

He looked closer. The flowers were not sleeping; they were dead. The soft whuff at his feet as he walked was the shuffle of lifeless things, tumbling upturned mushrooms and dismembered moths and fallen leaves. Nothing moved. It felt less like a garden and more like a grave. The pear tree was there ahead, right where it always was. The unease he always felt in his dreams—no, not dreams, he’d been slipping, and it always brought him right here—flared, along with the perverse urge to go toward it and see what lay on the other side.

He had to duck under the branches, they were so heavy with spoiled, worm-riddled fruit. Grimacing, he plucked one that bumped his temple. His fingers sank a little into the flesh, and his stomach tightened in disgust, but worse was the way the tree seemed to groan at the intrusion. Worst of all was how the groan sounded familiar. Kylo tossed the fruit to the ground and marched onward, beneath more overburdened branches, and forced himself to round the broad curve of the trunk.

Rey was seated against it, legs outstretched, body inert. Her hands rested in the dirt, fingers slightly buried. Her face was tipped upward as if seeking the sunlight through the shade, eyes closed, lips barely parted. 

“Rey . . . how—?” 

She couldn’t be here. He’d seen her in the study less than an hour ago. Yet there she was, propped under the tree, looking . . . not asleep. She looked dead. More dead than she ever had since he’d met her.

Half in panic, he fell to his knees and laid his hands on her shoulders. Even through her blouse and shawl, he could tell she was cold all over. Her skin was pale as marble, her lips and fingernails tinged with blue, her eyelashes sparkling with frost. Her breath was slow and shallow. 

Kylo twitched. Her breath? She didn’t breathe. She had no need to breathe, she was only—

A chill overcame him and did not fade. Kylo leaned nearer and laid his fingers to the side of her neck, just beside the edge of her jaw. Blood pulsed beneath her skin—sluggish as her breath as it puffed in feeble clouds against his cheek, but that was a  _ pulse _ . 

Ghosts didn’t have pulses. They didn’t breathe air. They didn’t look as corpse-like as Rey did now. 

He hadn’t found Rey. He’d found her body.

He had just enough time to wonder what that meant before he was plunged into the darkness of memories not his own.

⊖

  
  


Rey shrugged off the remnants of rest late in the day, and it did not occur to her to find Ben’s absence strange until the sun began to set. Every few days he left the house to retrieve things he needed from the city—most recently, he’d returned with a copy of  _ The Mysterious Island _ —but he always came back by the evening. Each night that passed it became easier to think he might not ever leave her. Ben’s presence was beginning to feel like just another thing that had always been part of her existence in the house. If he let her stay . . . maybe she could find a way to make him stay too.

She was looking forward to seeing him tonight more than ever. She didn’t dream, but she thought that if she did, she would have dreamt all day of how it had felt to touch him. Would he allow her to do so again tonight? He had said as much yesterday, as they faced each other in that hallway. But even curled beside him on the sofa, basking in his sheer human physicality, Rey had wondered if he’d only said it and allowed it because he felt bad for her. Another way to make something up to her. Another way to avoid saying he was sorry.

Tonight she would ask. Because she desperately wanted to touch him again. She wanted him to touch her back. It had felt like being alive.

First she had to find him, but he was in none of his usual places. Not the study, nor the kitchen, nor his bedroom. He wasn’t in the garden when she swept through to check, and as she reentered the house, she began to feel nervous. This was most irregular. A few weeks ago the idea that he’d finally gone might have filled her with relief—now it was devastating.

“Ben?” Her voice echoed and faded along the darkened corridor. 

Suddenly she was overtaken with an almost tangible dread, the clutch of a frigid hand deep in her chest. She knew where he was. The hidden room. He had gone back.

“No . . .” 

Rey hurried to the west wing, boots thundering, hair shaking loose from its pins. The tapestry had been lowered and was heaped on the floor. The door was shut, but she knew he was there on the other side. Her hatred of the room and inexplicable horror at what waited inside warred with her desire to find Ben. To save him. Because whatever was in there, it was dangerous, and it was not good, and he would not know how to protect himself.

Steeling herself, she threw the door open and stepped through. Her eyes scanned the room, skittishly skipping over the strange scrawls on the wallpaper and the odd collection of mirrors, and landed on Ben. She approached him with stiff, barely contained urgency.

He was sprawled on his back at the center of a salt circle. His coat and vest were folded neatly off to the side, near his bag and the open apothecary chest. Though his eyes were closed, she could see their rapid movement behind the lids, and his throat and lips trembled every so often. There was a slight, shimmering waver in the air around him, like steam rising off water. 

Rey murmured his name and crouched beside him. He was soaked in sweat but shivering, and what had looked like tears caught in his eyelashes were actually tiny crystals of ice. She wasn’t sure what to do to help him, though his condition tugged at a space in her mind that had been clouded for a very long time. All she could think was that the room in its wickedness had done this. She had warned him to stay away, but he had come back and now he was gone. 

No, not gone. Not yet.

She leaned over to bring her ear close to his mouth. He was breathing slowly but evenly, as if in a deep sleep. With night now fallen, her worldly senses were restored enough that she could catch a faint, bittersweet herbal smell on his breath. 

“Oh, you stupid man,” she muttered, throwing a dark glance at the apothecary chest, and moved around to crouch behind his head.

He was quite a bit larger than she was, but she thought if could get her arms hooked underneath his, she would be able to drag him out and worry about the rest after she had sealed the room back up. The longer she spent in there, the more disturbed she was by what she saw—would have seen, anyway, if she allowed herself to tear her eyes from the man prone at her feet. Disconcerting as it was to witness him in such a state, angry as she was at his flagrant disregard of her warnings, Rey felt a little curl of fond warmth at the sight of him. He did not look peaceful, but he was as handsome in repose as he had been that morning in the study. 

“It’s this place. I  _ told  _ you. Why didn’t you listen?” she said, though he gave no sign of hearing. A stray whorl of hair was stuck to his forehead with sweat, right above his twitching brows. Struck with another surge of affection and desire, she reached down to smooth it back. “What troubles you so, my necromancer?” 

The moment her fingers touched his skin, she felt as if she was being pulled in all directions at once. Ben was gone, and the room had changed in some small way she couldn’t quite figure out—until the door slammed open behind her. Rey lunged to her feet and spun, ready to defend herself, just in time to see a young woman enter, face grim and set. Her brown hair was tucked up into a loose twist, and she was carrying a shallow dish in her hands. She was pretty, but she looked quite sad. Her clothing was identical to Rey’s own.

Rey was looking at herself. It should have been absurd that she didn’t know it straightaway. Decades had passed since she’d last seen her own reflection, but that seemed a poor excuse. Had she truly forgotten? 

Bewildered, head splitting, she shrank away until her back hit the wall that was covered over in scores—except it wasn’t. It was whole and unmarred. In the center of the room, the other Rey had filled the bowl with water and was using a fat piece of chalk to trace an intricate network of lines across the floor, connecting mirror to mirror. She sat down before the bowl, lit three candles, and began to speak.

“Show me what I have come here to see.” Her voice would have sounded steady to anyone else, but Rey could detect a tremor of desperate emotion there. “Let the veil that separates the living and the dead be made thin. Let the path that runs between be opened to me. Let me speak to my family. I, Rhea Nemo, summon the spirits of Horace and Alice Nemo.” 

The other Rey dipped her chin and blinked. A few teardrops fell from her face into the bowl, and she hastily wiped them away as if afraid someone would see. 

“Please.”

Rey remembered now. She was remembering all sorts of things. Too many things.

She remembered something going very wrong. She remembered the room going dark, the water boiling, her vision swimming. She remembered how hard it had been to breathe, how it felt as if a rift had been torn in the very fabric of the world, starting in her heart and expanding outward, roiling out of control.

She remembered the way the mirrors had become like doors, and how she had run to the one that called her, thinking this was it, this was the moment, she would find them and finally be able to ask the question that plagued her.

Instead she’d found herself nowhere at all—just a vast stretch of empty land, knee-high grayish grass, and flat smoke-colored sky. She’d found mounting panic as time spun on interminably. She’d found a small boy, no more than five years old, dark-haired, dark-eyed, dressed in nightclothes, wandering on his own as if dazed.

“Please!” she cried, dashing up to him, grasping and short of breath. “Please, boy, will you help me? I’m lost here, and—”

He regarded her with wide-eyed alarm and stumbled away, mouthing in wordless fear as she clawed at him, desperate for him to stay, a hand closing hard around his arm until he cried out.

“Don’t touch me!”

“No, no, don’t run, please,” she begged, “I won’t hurt you, I just—” 

And then he’d wrenched away. He’d run and disappeared, as if he’d been plucked out by an unseen hand. She had been alone. She’d wandered for what felt like hours, or days, or years. She’d found a bare, nondescript tree, and sat down, and fallen asleep as sprouting flowers tickled her ankles and wrists.

She’d woken up again in the room, light-headed and nauseated. Nothing seemed amiss. She’d tried to leave.

It had not gone well.

Ben’s eyes shot open, and with them so did hers. 

She didn’t remember closing them. She didn’t remember falling to the ground beside him. The rest, though—her whole life, the truth of it, why she was here and why she had never left—she remembered that. It burned inside her like she’d swallowed a scuttle of hot coals.

“Ben . . .” She struggled to sit up, as drained as if she hadn’t rested for days and days. “I’m . . .”

His clammy hand groped at her face and derailed her frantic, unwieldy train of thought. Rey’s eyes snapped to his. Though he had come out of his trance as his spirit reunited with his body, that body was still recovering from the effects of whatever substance he had used. His pupils were enormous, gaze unfocused, mouth gulping down great breaths of air. He was speaking, but it was all garbled, half-formed nonsense.

“So scared . . . I was scared . . . You scared me . . . I’m so sorry . . . I found you . . . I saw it all . . . I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . .”

Rey wasn’t sure when she had started crying, but she couldn’t stop. She felt so full it hurt. Her head was bursting with things she’d have preferred to go on forgetting, things she was relieved to know again, her very self. It was too much at once: his hands on her face, her neck, her shoulders, her hands. He just kept touching and babbling. She hiccuped miserably. She had to let  _ something _ out, even if it was just tears.

“It’s all right. It’s all right. Please. Ben. Don’t.” Unsure of what else to do, she threw herself down over him and sobbed into the front of his shirt. She felt as if she’d just been pulled through a lifetime. “I want to rest. Can we rest, please? There’s so much I . . . I’m—”

“Rey. I’m sorry.”

His arms wrapped around her. He was quiet again. Already his skin was warming, the frost of his departure melting away as his breathing returned to equilibrium. He smelled like dried leaves and sweat and shaving soap. Rey drifted as a few stray tears escaped down her cheek and soaked into Ben’s shirt. She had not been embraced in so long, nor ever felt so safe. 

  
  


⊖

  
  


When Kylo woke again he was not sure what time it was, but he knew it had to be before sunrise because Rey’s weight against his chest was pleasant and solid. He felt as if he had just broken a fever, and when he moved his arm it didn’t  _ quite _ seem like his own. In another half hour or so he supposed he would be back to normal. He had been in the Vespertine far longer than he’d planned—hours longer, though it had felt like barely more than one. Time did that sometimes, in there. Even with every precaution taken, it was never easy to predict.

For now, he was debating whether he wanted to move and risk disturbing Rey. Yet when he peered down at her face, he found her eyes already open and fixed on the wall. He cleared his throat and loosened his hold on her, dismayed by how tightly his arms had been looped around her. 

“Are you all right?”

His voice was gravelly, like he hadn’t used it in years. Rey shifted, seemed to realize she was still pressed scandalously close to him, and pushed herself up to sit beside him instead.

“Yes,” she answered tersely, though her face softened a moment later. “Are you? You’re the one who was laid out like a corpse.”

Funny thing for her to say, given what he had found.

“I’ve done this many times before.”

“Ah, nearly killed yourself with poisonous plants? Yes, of course, very good.”

“That’s not what—” 

“The datura you took is from  _ my _ garden, you know. I saw you sneaking a clipping last week.”

He ignored her churlishness. “I know why you haven’t been able to leave this place.”

“So do I. I remember everything.” She expelled a long sigh and looked down at him, that little line of frustration deepening between her eyebrows. “Why did you come back here?”

“Because I had to find out what it was that frightened you so much. I thought it would tell me how to help you move on.”

She gave an ungracious snort. “I suppose you got that wish.”

He nodded, still uncertain what to do with the knowledge. She kept eyeing his hand. He thought she must want to touch it but was hesitant to ask his permission. Slowly, he reached for her until she took it, then wound his fingers loosely through hers.

“I found your body. It’s in the Vespertine,” he said. The unlikelihood of it still stunned him, but he knew what he had seen. “And I saw how it got there.”

“I saw it too,” she told him. “When I found you here. You were all . . . empty. I touched you, and I think I saw whatever you did.”

“I’d rather hear it from you. The full story, if you remember.”

For a moment Rey looked so stricken he wondered if she hadn’t actually seen anything after all. But then she set her jaw and turned further toward him. 

“How much would you like me to tell you?” 

“Whatever you want me to know.”

He was asking her to trust him more than he had any right to expect. For all she knew, whatever she told him might give him the power to send her away; though he wouldn’t. After what he’d seen, he was fairly certain they were past that point. He could not in good conscience expel a ghost who was not a ghost at all but a living woman so long divided from a crucial part of herself that it was a miracle her body had not perished.

Her mouth pursed, and then she began.

“I was left to an orphanage when I was quite small. In Truro. It closed down when I was fourteen, so I found work in one of the tin mines. I made a decent-enough wage and lived in a miners’ cottage with a few others.” Rey’s eyes flicked doubtfully over him. “I promise you, my life wasn’t at all interesting before I came here.”

“Please don’t stop.” He grimaced and sat up slowly. “It’s good to hear you finally able to remember who you are.”

The hint of a smile bloomed on her lips, and as she continued to speak he could sense her relaxing, as if she was settling into herself through the act of recollection. She told him of her adolescence as a bal maiden, processing tin and copper ore from a nearby mine. She knew she’d been luckier than many to come into honest work and a place to live, yet she’d never been able to shake off the desire to find her family again. As a child she’d puzzled over the other orphans’ lack of interest in where they’d come from and why, and as she’d entered the working world, she didn’t see why she should be interested in marriage and moving on when so much of her past remained unresolved. 

“I just wanted to know  _ why _ they gave me up. That was all. I wanted to speak to them and have the chance to say goodbye.” Rey shook her head and scoffed. “Maybe, I don’t know, tell them I didn’t hate them for it, even if I ought to have done. But then I learned they’d been dead for years, and I’d always been able to see ghosts—there were plenty in the city, even the spirit of an old cook in the orphanage . . . oh, that’s right, she used to tell me where they kept the extra food, and in return I’d pass messages to her grandson who lived in the town.”

Kylo chuckled at her sudden diversion, then grew serious.

“Did it make you wonder why you never saw your parents’ spirits?”

“ _ Yes _ . Oh, all the time. It drove me mad. Like they'd left me all over again. So, I decided, there must be a way to call them up. Make them come, make them speak to me. Just once. There was this shop in Truro, and I knew it catered to people with the Sight or who had an interest in it—you’ve been there, haven’t you, since arriving? I saw the candles and bundles of sage you brought in last week.”

“I know the one.” It was run by a small, ancient, sharp-tongued woman who reminded Kylo very much of a walnut in a mob cap. “They have an impressive inventory. San Tekka was evidently a frequent patron.”

“I suppose so, yes. Well, every Sunday after church I would spend the rest of the day there, reading.”

Kylo narrowed his eyes and stretched a leg out. He was finally feeling properly whole and awake again. “What were you hoping to find?”

“A ritual. Something to summon a spirit who had already moved on. I assumed it couldn’t be much different than what I was already able to do. Spirits were everywhere and so easy to talk to—how hard could it be to call one back from the beyond?”

“You attempted necromancy. Without any sort of training.”

She nodded, avoiding his eyes.

“That’s the sort of thing that  _ does _ drive a person to madness or the bottle or an early death when done improperly,” he said with a dark look.

Rey laughed sourly. “I know that now. I didn’t then, or I was warned and I didn’t listen. I was nineteen and very lonely and very sad, and I thought this would fix it. I’d always done things for myself.”

Kylo remembered being nineteen, and very lonely, and very sad. He remembered having similar thoughts and questions, and the urge to act and demand answers. He thought of telling her so, but she needed empathy, not interruptions. 

So all he said was, “I understand.”

She gave him a long, even look. He could see her turning something over in her mind. Whatever it was, she kept it close, and, seeming to sense no further judgment on his part, continued.

One evening after the workday had ended and Rey was tucking in to a dinner of tea and meat pasties, one of the other girls mentioned sneaking off into the San Tekka estate a few miles down the road the night before. She’d gone with a paramour, no doubt for a tryst in an abandoned, romantic locale. Instead they’d spent the time exploring the place, which had proven full of exciting and strange curiosities.

“The way she described it, it sounded like exactly the sort of space I needed. At the cottage I had no privacy to conduct any sort of summoning, and the house had been empty for at least a few years by then.” She shrugged. “So the next Sunday on the full moon, instead of going to the shop, I came here, and I set the stage, and I began what I thought would be a straightforward project. I don’t know what went wrong exactly. I know I entered the Vespertine. I got lost and . . . there was a boy.”

Rey lifted her chin and looked at him with new clarity.

“It was me,” Kylo said. “The boy you encountered. I forgot. It was one of the things I wanted to forget, when I used to slip. One of the nightmares.” 

He remembered now, sure as she did: the young woman, stormy and hellbent on escape, chasing him with hands outstretched and tears staining her reddened cheeks. She hadn’t been monstrous, but she had been so fierce and so human, and that had terrified him most of all. 

He gave her a repentant look, as if it mattered now. “I’m so sorry, Rey. I didn’t know any better. I was—”

“A child. I know. I’d have been just as frightened if I were small and wandering in a strange place and the distraught ghost of a grown man came running up to me demanding help.” A smile of sudden realization spread across her face. “My little brother.”

“What?”

“This whole time I thought I had a little brother. But I never did—it was you. I was waiting for you.”

Slowly, Kylo understood too. He had been the last person she saw before being trapped during a failed attempt to contact her family. With time, as her memories fell away and she lost her grasp on who she had once been, the images and events had melded into something just shy of truth.

“I don’t blame you,” she said quietly. 

“I’m sorry just the same.” 

He had uttered that word more times today than he had in the last ten years of his life, he was sure. It didn’t feel as empty as it usually did. 

“I don’t understand how it happened though,” she muttered, almost to herself. “The way I passed through—all of me, not just my spirit. It’s not supposed to work that way.”

“No, it’s not.” He looked at her cautiously, the wonderful smoothness of her palm still warm against his. “You remember how I told you there is a thin place here?”

“Hm. You think it’s why my body became trapped?”

“I think you created it.” 

“ _ I _ did? How?”

“Your body has survived there for over twenty years. It should be impossible. But I saw it. It’s suspended. Entranced. It hasn’t even aged.” 

He managed to catch himself before he blurted that she’d been beautiful, too, just as much as she was here.

“So?”

Kylo held his breath a moment and considered how to explain. “You possess an enormous reserve of spiritual energy. That’s power. Your ritual disrupted the barrier, and then you slipped through—your body was stuck, and your spirit came out instead. An inversion. It’s been thin here ever since, and as long as your spirit exists on this side, your body has been sustained on the other.”

As she processed this in stolid silence, her gaze drifted to the wall.

“What are those?” he asked, indicating the score marks.

“When I awoke here afterward, that night, I tried to leave the house. But I reached the edge of the property, near the stream, and then I was just— _ pop _ !—snapped right back here. Right to this room, like I’d reached the end of a leash.”

“You had.” 

“I tried again and again. Every night for weeks. Months . . .” She waved a dismissive hand at the wall, and he could tell she was already tired of seeing it. “I added one of those marks for every day I tried to leave. Until I forgot why I was trying and I shut the room up.” 

For a moment her jaw tightened and her eyes dimmed, and he recognized the look—she was retreating into herself, trying to keep her emotions in check. He wanted to offer some reassurance, though he was not certain he had any to give.

“There must be—”

“We should go,” she said. “It is nearly dawn. I feel it coming.” 

Yet before he could rise and offer her a hand up, she turned to him and gripped the front of his shirt. He ought to have been self-conscious of how it was wrinkled and not quite dried of sweat, but he was too distracted by the way her fingernails brushed the skin of his chest. Her face was as close to his as it had been that morning. He could have counted her freckles.

He swallowed and froze. “Are you able to stand?” 

“Oh. Yes.” 

Her eyes dropped to the hand on his shirt, and this time she did press the pads of her fingers to the narrow V of bared skin at the top of his loosened collar. When he said nothing to put her off, she flattened her palm over the same spot, then slid her hand beneath the fabric until it rested over the left side of his chest.

“You’re warm, that’s all,” she said, as if answering an unasked question. “And your heart is beating. Do you ever think about how wonderful that is?”

“I don’t.”

“Perhaps you should.”

“Your heart is beating too,” he reminded her. “On the other side.”

“That’s not enough.”

“But it means it isn’t too late.”

“Maybe so.” Her fingers dug lightly at his skin. “There’s so much I’ve missed. A whole life, things I could have done, if . . .” 

A flash of intense emotion shadowed her face—frustration and regret, certainly, but they were gone quickly, brightened by hopeful resolve. With her hand pressed so insistently to his skin, he could feel it too. For the first time in a very long time, Rey was ready to move forward. 

She looked up at him with that same fixity of purpose. “You said when you arrived that you had come to help me. I didn’t want it then, but I’m asking now. I know this isn’t what either of us intended, but help me fix it. I don’t want to do it alone.”

“Then you won’t.” His pulse began to skip, and he placed his hand over hers. “My purpose here hasn’t changed. I’m not leaving this house behind until you’re able to do the same. In your own body. I promise you.”

Rey uttered a short, shrill laugh of relief, swayed forward, and kissed him. He should have been expecting it (he  _ had _ been, or at least he had very much wanted to do the same to her), but it was a moment more before he had the wherewithal to return it. 

Indeed, it had been so long since he had kissed a woman that he half expected he’d forgotten how, but Rey’s cautious curiosity dispelled all his worries. Her lips brushed his gently at first, as if by accident, then returned again for another peck that lingered a bit longer and ended in a gentle, experimental suck at his lower lip. She stopped then, perhaps acclimating to the feel and taste of his mouth, her forehead tipped against his and her fingers stretched over his chest.

“This is not what you meant when you said I could touch you again, is it?” she murmured.

If she feared she had done something wrong, she was doing a terrible job of showing it. A sly smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, and he pressed his lips there. 

“I have no objections.”

She sighed and kissed him once more. This time he was ready and met her, slowly pursuing her lips as her chin dipped, inviting her to press back, until it felt like a game of gradual degrees. 

He did not get the impression she was shy or unsure. To the contrary, her eagerness was clear in the way her fingers twitched and circled, in her minute efforts to move closer, and in the small sounds that puffed from her mouth to his. But he understood, too, that this was more. It was more than linked hands, or her head on his shoulder, or his arms around her, more than she’d had in nearly as many years as he had been alive. After just a handful of rather chaste kisses, his body was half on fire with longing and the possibility of where it all might lead—how much more overwhelming was the same meeting of lips to a woman who marveled at the heat of his skin? 

Though he marveled too. Even so close to sunrise, Rey felt effervescent and alive. Her cool lips warmed at his touch and the paleness of her skin deepened to a rosy flush. The tip of her tongue, when it poked at the seam of his lips before darting back into the shelter of her own mouth, was firm and wet. Pure energy thrummed inside her like the heart of a star. It buzzed against his skin and swam in his blood, reaching deep, drawing him in. 

Kissing her was not at all like kissing an ordinary person, but it was novel and exciting and spoke to a part of him he had ignored for too long. 

And it was fleeting. Kylo was just tracing a thumb along the side of her throat, delighted by how it made her lips tremble against his, when his head nodded forward into empty air. He straightened up, startled, his mouth hanging open stupidly.

Morning, then. Rey was still sitting right there in front of him, tousled and bemused . . . not disappointed, though. She looked satisfied. He reached for her face and felt the barest resistance. Her cheek was a fluttering curve of chilled air against his palm. If he pressed harder he could have passed through her. Instead he dropped his hand and shook his head. 

“I have work to do,” he said, reluctant to be the first to move away, “if I’m going to find a way to bring you out.”

She gave him a knowing glance as she got to her feet and straightened her skirt. The blush had not yet faded from her cheeks, and her faint flowery scent hung in the space between them as she looked around the room with a renewed depth of determination in her gaze.

“We both do.”


	4. To Feel Something New

Rey spent a few hours that morning researching with Ben. Since she could not hold a pen or turn a page, this amounted to sitting at his elbow and reading whichever manual or grimoire he had buried his nose in. She was not precisely sure what they were looking for—nor, it seemed, was he—but the work was fascinating. 

Though her disastrous brush with the art of necromancy ought to have filled her with fear at the prospect of dabbling again, she found that she respected its subtleties and perils in a way she had not before and was eager to know more. This was the sort of thing she might have done with her life, given the chance: learned to hone her aptitudes and quench her curiosities in a way that empowered rather than imprisoned her. Anyone else might have fallen into bitter regret for opportunities lost and years wasted, but Rey found she could only think of what came next.

When she returned to her body, she would have a future. A real, full life. A _new_ life. No more waiting. From now on she only wanted to move forward. 

She would rediscover the world she had missed as it had gone on changing without her. There were so many places she wanted to travel to and see with her own eyes—and smell, and taste, and touch—instead of merely reading about them in encyclopedias and novels. She wanted to hear music, in a concert hall or in a park at night or even out of one of those gramophones she’d learned about. And oh, she wanted to eat and drink again—the greasy richness of a meat pasty, the sour tang of cheap ale, the rare, perfect treat of a sticky ginger cake.

And she so, so wanted to feel the sun warm her face. 

The sensible part of her mind insisted it could not be so simple. There was still the matter of  _ retrieving  _ her body, and when that happened, what sort of state would it be in? Ben was right—it had been trapped a very long time. Impossibly long. And even if the reunion was a success, she had no family, no employment, no friends to help her find her feet. Her own history, now so dear to her, was of no consequence. She would be left to face a world she didn’t know on her own. 

Or perhaps not.

Would Ben be a part of the life she reclaimed? When she imagined what awaited beyond the house, she could sometimes see him by her side. As they sat in the study, he indulged her intermittent questions and observations with familiar patience. He didn’t speak to her as if she were ignorant or inferior. He made her feel like an equal. A partner. 

The notion of chaining herself to a man, to keep his house and bear his children and defer always to his wishes, had never appealed to her, even when it had been the only feasible way to leave the mines behind. Yet to experience the world with  _ this  _ man standing by her . . . that fired her imagination. It would be the sort of partnership she desired, in every aspect—mental, emotional, spiritual. Physical. 

Or she was merely fooling herself. It was possible his attachment to her was not so acute, and when they finished here, that would be the end, partnership dissolved.

That kiss, though . . .

A fuzzy sensation spread over her face, and she stole a look at him out of the corner of her eye. He was shuffling a hand through his hair, lower lip caught with his teeth as his eyes scanned a page. The spectacles he donned when they read (and which she secretly thought made him look very fine) were slightly askew, perched on the bridge of his long nose. Why was it only noon? If it were nighttime she could have pushed her own hand into his hair and caught that lip with her own teeth. The fuzzy sensation spread to her chest and downward, until it was so dense and deep she could not sit still.

Time to do something else. If she stayed in this room with him much longer she might take drastic action, though given that she could not touch anything, she couldn’t fathom what that might be. 

How infuriating.

“I’m tired,” she declared, rising from the piano bench Ben had pulled up to the desk so that she could join him. “Do you mind if I go awhile?”

He looked genuinely surprised to find her no longer at his side, but nodded a fraction. “Not at all. I should have . . .” He scrubbed a hand over his chin. “Go rest. I’ll find you tonight and we can discuss how to proceed.”

She did not let herself dwell on whether he sounded sad to lose her company as she exited the study in search of a quiet place to center herself. The house had no shortage of such spaces, yet for all those options, Rey’s feet took her not to the garden nor to the parlor but to the no-longer-hidden room. Her fear of it had withered away, as had her hatred. Though it had once been filled with only a cloud of obscured memory, she had made a few good memories within its walls since then. It was time, she thought, to clear up the remnants of her past missteps and set the room right.

But first she needed to restore herself. She spent most of the day lying comfortably on the pile of cushions in the corner of the room, her eyes closed and mind furled. When she came to, night had fallen, for her makeshift bed had a heft and density she had not been able to perceive when she’d laid down. She sat up and stretched, and her eyes caught on movement in one of the mirrors.

Her own reflection was gazing impassively back, arms poised mid-stretch. It had been there last night too, but she’d been too swept up in self-rediscovery to pay it much mind. 

Now, though, alone and free of distractions, she was rapt. Rey had never been vain in life, and being able to see herself was another one of those luxuries she had forgotten to miss. She walked up to the mirror and traced a finger down the dusty glass, taking in the details of her face as she leaned closer. There was the tiny scar on her cheek—a flying bit of stone from the mine had given it to her. She traced the freckles she’d used to hate and the slightly downturned line of her lips, which she’d often thought made her look sullen and unamicable. 

When she returned to her body, she would love them all. Every single quality she might have found fault with. She just wanted to be whole again.

There was a tickle in her throat when the door creaked. She cleared it away and turned. 

“I knew where you were, but it’s still surprising to find you here,” Ben said, lingering in the doorway with the tapestry folded in his hands. 

“It felt like the place to come.” 

“Did you rest?”

“Yes, I feel much more like myself.” 

Rey fussed with a loose hairpin and watched him enter. She may have rested, but he clearly had not. His eyes were heavy and his mouth a bit slack; he’d left his vest elsewhere and was down to his shirtsleeves and braces again, though only one sleeve was rolled. He stopped near the middle of the room, but his eyes continued to drift over her.

“You haven’t seen your reflection in a very long time, have you?” he asked.

“Not since I started forgetting myself. And now—there I am.”

“There you are.” He seemed to deliberate, then came closer until he was standing beside her. It was an unexpectedly moving thing to see herself at his side. Together they made a handsome pair, even as he fidgeted his sleeve back into place. “Is it strange?”

“Is it—” She abandoned her sentimental ruminations. “No, not strange. It’s making me remember more things. Silly things.”

His lips curved until long dimples appeared at their corners. “Like what?”

“How I hated this skirt,” she said with a wry look, lifting the hem a few inches before letting it drop heavily back over her boots. “And how some of the girls and I saved part of our wages for months, then pooled the sum to buy a fancy gown. We’d take turns with it. It made me feel very beautiful.” She scoffed and gestured again at her outfit. “It was much prettier than this calico.”

In the mirror, his mouth tightened, then squirmed. She hadn’t seen that look on his face in some time, though the color of his cheeks was the same as it had been after they’d kissed.

“You’re very beautiful now,” he told her, “even with the calico.”

She ignored the flutter in her gut and nodded with a soft, brief laugh. “Thank you. I think so too.”

Before she could stop it from forming, Rey had the fleeting, horrible, excellent idea of asking him if he would find her beautiful if she weren’t wearing the calico, or a fine gown, or indeed a single stitch of clothing whatsoever.

Horrible idea. Excellent idea.

No, definitely horrible.

As she continued to debate herself, Ben stepped away from the mirror and crossed to one of the others, as if he expected to see something other than the two of them reflected in its glass. 

“I found what we were looking for,” he said. “There’s a way to recover your body and reincorporate you.”

Forget the other ideas, horrible or excellent or otherwise, this was what she wanted to hear. Rey went to him. “Tell me.”

“It will need to wait until the next full moon”—at her grumble of frustration, he lifted an eyebrow—”two nights from now. That’s all.”

“Ah. Well. That’s acceptable. After this long, what’s a few more nights?”

He snickered in agreement. “I’ll send my spirit with you. Once you are in the Vespertine, you’ll naturally gravitate toward your body, but it will be easy to get lost on the way out with nothing linking you to this side.”

“Your body.”

“Yes. It will serve as an anchor to guide us back after you’ve reincorporated.”

She recalled the state in which she had found him last time—feverish and delirious with the toxins that were leaving his system, his spirit barely settled within its mortal cage. 

So cold. So like death itself.

“Is that safe?”

“Safe enough.”

“And necessary, I suppose.” Rey grimaced. “All right. Then what?”

“We will need to return with some haste. The rift is very volatile. It will likely begin to close itself up without you there to keep it open.”

Though she tried, Rey was unable to keep the anticipation from her voice as she murmured, “Sounds like an adventure.” 

“That’s one way to look at it.” Despite the scolding nature of his words, his tone suggested he was excited as well. He let a hand rest as her elbow. “There is risk. I should warn you.”

“I assumed there would be.”

“Yes, but . . . in this case, there’s a chance your body will die when you emerge. Perhaps before. It has been in the Vespertine for a very long time. The reunion of your body and spirit would be a shock, as would emergence into the living world.”

She sighed, letting the idea wash over her. 

“I want to try. If I die, at least it will be real this time. It might be peaceful, finally.”

“Seems a poor consolation after everything that has happened to you.”

“Ben.” She looked up at him until he met her gaze. “I’m not afraid. You shouldn’t be either. This is the sort of thing you do, isn’t it?”

“Hm.”

He looked so suddenly miserable with the idea that she was hit all at once with a realization—this was no longer ‘the sort of thing he did’. It wasn’t a job for him anymore. It was completely about her. Because he cared for her.

“You know how much I’ve wished lately I could find a way to make you stay here with me?” she confided, taking his hand and pressing her palm so tight against his it tingled. 

Ben’s unease melted enough to allow the hint of a smile, and he turned to her to take her other hand in his. “You want to keep me?”

“If I’d thought you would let me.” Unthinking, she wet her lips. “Can I?” 

She rose up on her toes and brought her mouth to his before he could answer. It was easy. He’d already been leaning toward her, anticipating or seeking to initiate. Every time she touched him the enormity of the sensations it sparked in her became less daunting and more desirable. If she kept this up she wouldn’t be able to break away. She wanted so much more. 

His mouth was just as needy, just as welcoming, as petal-soft as she’d once imagined. He broke the kiss first but stayed close, his cheek resting against hers. 

She heard him swallow before he gave his reply. “Not like this.”

“ _ Exactly _ .” She leaned into him until his arms curled around her. “You see? You understand why I’d rather fail at trying to make this right than—” Her voice caught. She saw a glimpse of her lip trembling in a mirror and looked away. “I’m not whole. I’m barely alive. I’m close enough to nothing as it is, and I can’t go on  _ existing _ like this when—”

“Don’t. Don’t say that.”

She tipped her head back to look at him. “What?”

“You’re right. You do deserve a chance to leave this place and take your life back. That decision is yours, and I’ll do what I can to ensure you succeed.” He bracketed her cheeks with his palms. “But please don’t say you’re nothing. You wouldn’t be even if you stayed like this. Not even if all that remained of you was an echo in an empty room.”

“Ben—” 

“You’re  _ not _ , Rey. Not to me.” 

There was such conviction in the way he looked at her that Rey was stretching up to resume their embrace before she’d consciously made the decision to do so, and she took him enough off guard that he knocked into one of the mirrors and almost sent it tipping to the floor. He caught it, somehow, and rebalanced it against the wall without so much as parting his lips from hers. A laugh escaped his throat, just a low chuckle as they moved toward the middle of the room again, and the faint vibration of the sound sent an astounding flood of heat from her scalp to her toes.

Surging with need, she looped her arms behind his neck and crushed her mouth to his in a display of ferocious, graceless enthusiasm. His grunt of surprise when she pushed her tongue inquisitively at his lips and then into his mouth delighted her, as did the way he so readily returned her intensity. It was overwhelming, but in a glorious way that made her want to lose herself entirely within the haze of his lips slanting against hers and his fingers tracing the planes of her face, glancing over her bosom, and grasping at her waist.

In little time her hands had abandoned the soft waves of his hair to busy themselves at his shirt buttons as he peppered kisses along her jaw. The bright, ticklish feeling his lips left in their wake nearly made her giggle, but the sound emerged as a growl as she struggled with a button that finally,  _ finally _ , came free. She paused. Ben was still busy at the side of her neck, and he didn’t seem the slightest bit concerned that she might be in the process of undressing him.

Rey let him continue and slid another button loose just as his teeth scraped below her ear, drawing a sharp peep of surprise from her.

He pulled away just enough to murmur into her ear, “Too much?”

Her eyes fluttered at the puff of his breath there. She would have liked to catch it and hold on to its fleeting softness. 

“No,” she assured him. She shook her head and rolled the edge of the latest button between her fingers, then slipped it free. “Not at all.”

Ben’s gaze flickered and dropped to her hands as she flattened one against the center of his partially bared chest. The insistent rhythm of his heart thundering under her palm stoked her sense of daring, and she pressed a long kiss to his sternum. He radiated as much beautiful, living warmth as ever—it was like entering the cottage at the end of a frigid day at the mine, the slow spread of heat from her cheeks to her neck and everywhere else. 

“Not enough?” he amended.

She bit back a grin. “Not quite.”

He hummed and took his hands from her waist, which was disappointing until she realized he’d only done so to slide his braces off his shoulders. The corner of his mouth twitched as he caught her gawping, and a line of doubt appeared on his brow. “Is this . . . not what you . . .?”

Rey attacked his buttons again, not wanting to give him time to doubt or prevaricate. When his shirt was open, he shrugged it off, then seemed at a loss for where to put it—until he concluded the floor would suffice as she slid her hands slowly down his chest and over his torso. A small sound rattled around in the back of his throat, but he said nothing and relaxed under her sweeping touches. 

She was neither overly familiar with male bodies nor wholly ignorant, though the context of this encounter was new, and she found Ben’s more than agreeable: from the breadth of his shoulders, to the strong swell of his chest, to the solidity of his abdomen as the muscles there tensed at each pass of her fingertips. She drew a hand from his wrist to the rise of his bicep.

“You’re very . . .”

“Warm?” he supplied, though his voice was tight, and she wondered if he had tired of hearing her hushed awe every time she so much as grazed his skin with a finger. Yet she couldn’t stop the next word that dropped from her tongue.

“Beautiful.”

He breathed out sharply, a sigh or a weak laugh, then lifted her chin as if he was about to kiss her. Yet when their eyes met, he must have noticed some passing look of consternation on her face.

“What’s wrong?”

“Do you want to touch me?” she blurted. “Like this?”

His eyes passed over her and she had the distinct impression that he was thinking about what she might look like in a state similar to his own. “Yes.”

“Good.” 

It seemed unfair that she should be so bold with him yet allow so little room to reciprocate if he desired. The exploratory touches and kisses were one matter, but she was hungry to know what it would feel like to be caressed and held skin to skin. She wondered how she would look stripped so bare and how he would look at her.

At the moment, his expression held a sharpness of focus she had never seen there before. It wrung the heavy tension of arousal, so low and deep inside her, even tighter. 

“Let me help,” he said. 

He kissed her palm, then stepped around her, fingers searching for the fastening of her skirt. As he dealt with that, she began unbuttoning her blouse, hands quivering not with nerves but anticipation. Next were her petticoat and slip, and not for the first time she was grateful she’d eschewed a corset the night she’d come here. She could see herself in the mirrors as each layer dropped away, and she could see Ben watching her from behind. His eyes were hungry but a touch uncertain, as if he could not quite believe this was happening.

She was down to her chemise and bloomers when his hands came to rest at her shoulders. One traced slowly downward, between her shoulder blades, stopping at the neckline of her chemise. He ran his nails just beneath it. The new intimacy and care in his touch made her feel as if she were vibrating on the verge of explosion.

Rey stole a look at the mirror—if what she saw there was only an illusion of life, it was a painfully good one. Her eyes were shining, her lips plump and well-kissed, and her skin smooth and dewy, a blush of pleasure spreading from her cheeks to her chest. The chemise was thin enough that it left little of her modesty intact. Behind her, Ben had his face buried in her hair as his other hand slid up her ribs and glanced over her breast. She sighed and sank into him until he began to caress it, circling his thumb around the stiffening peak of her nipple through the fabric. Her knees went to jelly again and she tipped backward into his chest with a gasp.

“Time to move, I think,” he said, scooping her off her feet and depositing her on the cushions in the span of a few long strides.

A moment later they were tangled again, face-to-face, pressed flush from chest to thigh. He tugged the sleeve of her chemise down and began to kiss her shoulder, holding her so tightly as his lips drifted lower that she wondered if he feared she would float away. They had hours before she would fade, yet he clung to her as if the touch of another human being was something he couldn’t quite trust.

She tightened her hand in the hair at the nape of his neck and nestled her face against the crown of his head. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I know. It’s . . .” The meandering kisses at her shoulder slowed. “I haven’t been with anyone like this in—” He cleared his throat and stole a look at her face, no doubt realizing too late the faux pas of mentioning prior intimate encounters. “That is, people keep their distance. That’s all. I can’t remember the last time I touched another person before you. Years, I expect.”

“Twenty-five?” 

“You win.” 

“Not a victory I particularly wanted.”

He gave a gruff chuckle and nipped at her shoulder, then asked with a hint of caution, “Had you done this before?”

“No.” There had been passing interests, a kiss or two with boys in the city. Nothing Rey had wanted to pursue further. Perhaps she would have, if she’d known the interminable half-life that awaited and how it would rob her of even the most incidental forms of human contact—but she was happy it was Ben, for this, strange as the circumstances were. “You have though.”

“Yes.”

“Good. I like the idea you know what you’re doing.”

“That’s a generous assumption,” he said, lightly teasing, “but I’ll try.”

“What will you try?”

His hand shifted from the rise of her rump, traced over her hip, and settled at the apex of her thighs, where his fingers twitched and rubbed tentatively. “To make you feel something new.”

The shudder of unfurling heat returned full force, and she pressed back at his hand with a quiet moan. She let him remove her chemise first and felt a flash of self-conscious pleasure at how he looked at her as he tossed it aside. She hadn’t comprehended until that moment that he was as awed by her as she was by him. 

The look of astonished reverence was still there as he coaxed her onto her back and shifted to lavish his attentions on her bared breasts. He stroked and kissed, murmuring praise as he took in the tender smoothness of her skin. Then he grew bolder—licking and nipping at the soft swells, dragging his tongue over her nipples and sucking at them until she arched into him for more, her thighs clenching, toes curling, fingers digging at the back of his neck. The pulse of needy pressure manifested as a warm wetness now, in a place that was begging more than ever to be touched. 

Ben shifted down her body as if he intended to kiss every inch before revealing more of her, then tugged her bloomers down her legs. She only then realized how cool the air in the room was, still and thin like a morning in early autumn, as she shivered and her skin tightened in a peculiarly pleasurable way.

A laugh burst from her lips as he untied one of her stockings and began to peel it down her thigh. He looked at her in alarm. 

“I’m fine,” she assured him. “Truly. Goosebumps, that’s all. It’s good. Ben, you feel so—”

Her praise fell off into a broken cry of surprise when he abandoned the removal of her stockings and ran an open palm over her navel and down to her sex, then applied light pressure.

“Does this feel good?” he asked, turning his hand to draw his fingers over her. Tentatively, he parted her with a finger and swept it along her inner lips, then added another.

“ _ Yes _ . More. Please.”

“My God, you’re so . . .”

She gave a whimper of pleasure as he circled her entrance. Her thighs dropped open further. “So what?”

“Wet.  _ Hot _ . It’s . . .” 

It wasn’t the answer she expected—much less romantic, for one thing—but it filled her with a glow of satisfaction nonetheless. 

“How are you possible?” he murmured, more to himself than to her.

Rey laughed again and turned her head, eyes drawn to the sight of herself in the mirrors. She was spread out on her back with Ben leaning over her, his hand between her legs as the other moved slowly up and down the underside of her thigh, drawing it outward, his torso tensed, hair hanging in his face. She arched her back and stretched her arms overhead, as overcome by the sight of herself in such a wanton state as she was by the feeling of his strong hands taking liberties with her naked body.

“You like to see yourself like this,” he said, following her gaze as he sank one digit slowly into her. “Laid out and shameless while I touch you. Do you?”

It sounded like an observation rather than an attempt to excite her further, but another tide of heat washed over her at his words. She moaned, and her eyes fluttered shut as he stroked her— _ inside, he was inside her, no one had ever touched her like this— _ the intrusion shocking but welcome. His face hovered over hers, and she tore her eyes from the mirror to catch his lips, biting his lower lip as he pulled away and chuckled. 

“Ah, you do.”

“Yes. Yes, I like it.” Her head fell to the side again as he kissed his way along her throat. “I like to see how I squirm with your fingers inside me.”

His finger slid in and out a few more times, then withdrew as his lips brushed her ear. “Roll onto your side.”

She luxuriated in the way the soft, worn cushions shifted beneath her as she did so. When she was settled he stretched out behind her, one arm pillowing her head, the other reaching around to return to its work between her thighs. From this angle, she was afforded a salacious view of herself in his arms, her entire body on display as she moved with him—her mussed hair, the pert rise of her breasts, each taut twitch of her belly, her legs half bared with her stockings askew. She looked wild and undone, and oh, she did like it. 

The angle of his hand was new, but the effect no less stimulating. By the time he was able to fit two fingers inside, she’d realized that if she rocked her hips against him, the heel of his palm placed a maddening friction on the small, sensitive spot that had been throbbing since the moment she’d gotten his shirt off. Soon she could hardly control herself at all. Her hips jerked with greater urgency as she chased the promise of release, deepening the blunt pressure of his hand as his fingers stroked and curled, until each thrust pulled an obscene string of gasps, moans, and whines from her throat.

She peaked with a shout as the tension broke, sudden and explosive. It felt as if her entire being had flown apart and condensed again just as quickly, so that all she knew was the euphoric tingle of her limbs and the persistent frisson of release where Ben’s fingers slowly pulled away with a faint, wet sucking sound. His hand was slick as it settled over her stomach. Against her back, his chest was hot and sweaty, his heart hammered, and, right at her rump, the hard length of his erect cock strained at the fabric of his trousers.

That seemed a shame.

Rey stretched and ground into him, provoking a strangled groan into her hair. “I’ll grant you, that was new,” she said.

“I've never pleasured a spirit to completion before. Or at all.” He sounded breathless and boyishly self-satisfied, which amused her. “Novelties abound.”

She snorted back a laugh, then reached a hand between them to feel him through his trousers.

Yes, indeed, hard as an iron poker.

Also new. 

She blushed and stole one last look at herself in his arms, then rolled to face him. He kissed her immediately, puffing a breath into her mouth as she pushed him gently onto his back. When she pulled away it was only to make quick work of divesting him of his remaining garments; then she paused, poised over his thighs, taking him in. He was so broad and long and firm all over, part of her wanted to curl up on top of him and simply bask like a lizard. But she was already buzzing with desire for more at the sight of him like this. His chest twitched with a questioning grunt as her wide-eyed gaze followed the trail of dark, coarse hair from his navel to his cock, where it jutted inches from her hips. 

“We’ll go slow,” he said, though the longing in his eyes spoke more of desperation than delicacy.

“We’ve been doing rather too well at that so far. I’m afraid I’m nearly out of patience.” 

She wrapped an eager hand around him and drew it along his shaft—so hot and firm, thicker and more veined than she’d expected, but surprisingly soft and smooth-skinned. The head of it was purpled and wet with a faint sheen of fluid. She swiped her thumb through it curiously and considered as she ran her hand up and down a few more times.

“Did you already . . . erm. Finish? I thought there would be more of this.” 

“No. That’s just—there will be. More.” His breath hitched, and he shifted his hips as she continued exploring him and another fat pearl of liquid appeared—but a smirk tugged at one side of his mouth. “Though sooner than we’d like if you proceed as you are.”

“Oh? Oh!” Rey released him and settled on his thighs. “Goodness. Should I . . .?”

“Your hands are lovely, but I promise it will feel better for both of us if—oh. Yes. That.”

She’d taken him in hand again, more gently, and lifted herself over him to line the head of his cock up with her entrance. His hand came to her low back, fingers spread, supporting her carefully as he rose up to sit. 

“Slow,” he repeated, pressing a brief kiss below her ear. “If it hurts you, we can stop. There are other things we can do.”

Before Rey could inquire what those other things might be, she gasped at the first nudge of him inside her, a thick, gradual pressure that was surprisingly insistent. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but there was an unfamiliar dull ache as her body began to accommodate him.

“I haven’t felt pain in a very long time. I might welcome it.”

“Rey . . .”

She sank further, and he broke off with a moan, fingers digging at the top of her buttocks.

“It doesn’t hurt,” she assured him, drawing a hand over his chest. “Please trust me.”

He kept kissing her as she took more of him, his hands stroking her back, or curling into her hair, or caressing her face. After the initial breach, the discomfort ebbed. The press of him was good and almost anchoring as she took him by degrees, and his earlier attentions eased the stretch inside—though she couldn’t help wondering if her not-quite-physical state was also making it easier. 

It hardly mattered. Tonight might be all they had. She would welcome whatever concessions her predicament afforded.

Still, she stopped before she had taken all of him and rose up experimentally, then rocked back down, deeper this time, letting her head fall forward with a shaky sigh as he reclined, her hands planted on his chest. She hadn’t been so full of anything in so long. Not like this. She rose again, fell again, began to find a rhythm. 

“That’s good,” Ben murmured below her, his eyes falling shut as he swore rather spectacularly and thrust his hips up into her on her next descent. “So good.”

She’d thought she would want to watch again, to see how the union of their bodies looked reflected back at her—and she did, at first, fascinated by the sight of his cock disappearing into the dusky curls between her thighs, of how strong and soft her legs looked as she rode him, of her hair shaken loose of its pins and falling over her shoulders in a tangle. 

But in the end she couldn’t look away from Ben. She was enchanted by the minute changes in his face as he watched her from below and the way the white column of his throat bobbed with each swallow and groan; she was completely immersed in the feel of his sweat under her fingers and the strength of his hands when he palmed her breasts or kneaded his fingers at her hips. With each untethered sound that escaped his parted lips, she felt a swell of affection, gratitude, and desire. She’d done nothing to deserve him, and yet here he was, closer and more real than anything she could have wished for, the person who knew her most in the world.

“Touch me again. The way you did before,” she requested, leaning close until her breasts brushed his chest with each movement. The thickness of her voice surprised her. She blinked and a few droplets of moisture pattered onto his skin. Her eyes stung. She tried to brush away the tears she hadn’t realized were there. “Ben?”

“I’m close too, if you—oh." He looked up at her and thumbed away a tear that had escaped to her chin. “It’s all right.”

“I’m not sad. I’m just— I’m very . . . full. What I feel, it’s so . . . I’m sorry.”

“Rey, no.” He propped himself up to kiss her, then slipped a hand between their bodies. His fingers stroked her gingerly where they came together, then with greater intensity when her moan quavered into a sob in the rush of her building climax. “You’re so perfect. Just like this. You’re everything.”

Her body stiffened over him, and she came with a shuddering gasp, carried over the edge by the dexterous slide of his fingers. This time she noticed the insistent contraction of herself around him as he moved. He was still holding her tight when he rolled her beneath him, hips rocking against her in deep, deliberate thrusts, his urgency barely in check. Pinned between his weight and the cushions, she was grounded again, and her tears slowed as the unexpected surge of her emotions calmed. She felt too good to be embarrassed, too alive and in the moment. Nothing else mattered. Just this.

She wasn’t surprised that when he finished, he was practically silent. He was so reticent in nearly all other respects. There was simply a catch in his breath, then his whole body seemed to contract with the final thrusts until she felt him pulsing as he spilled into her. His hips stilled more gradually, in quick little jerks like aftershocks. He was breathless and red-faced when she caught his eye, and she thought she saw a glimmer there too. The track of moisture over his cheek could have been sweat; or it could have been a tear. 

Rey smudged it away and pressed her palm to the side of his face, curling her fingers behind his ear. He shifted off to the side as he pulled out of her but didn’t break contact when she wove a leg behind his to keep him close. It was impossible to miss how he shivered.

She shuffled nearer. “Are you cold?” 

“No.” He draped an arm over her as she rested her forehead against his chest, and his voice was light and loose. “I feel like a furnace.”

“Hmm, so do I. It’s spectacular, don’t you think?” 

In fact, it was difficult to tell the difference between the heat from his body and the ember-like glow that seemed to reside somewhere in her chest. The sensation was so intimate and perfect she hardly wanted to move.

“It is, but strange too,” he muttered after a few moments as his fingers played with the ends of her hair and circled down over her skin. 

“Maybe. I can feel your . . . life force, I suppose?”

“My spirit.”

“Yes.” She tilted her head back to look at him. “But I feel mine flowing into you too. They’re all bound up, like, hmm . . . ah. You know the morning glories in the garden?”

His chin brushed the top of her head with a nod.

“It’s like that,” she said. She wove her fingers into the hair by his ear, twisting lightly, letting the strands curl. “The way the vines twist and coil around each other. So much you can’t tell where any one of them starts.”

“I feel it too. I felt it the first time you touched me.”

“Me too.”

“Part of me wanted so much to be with you.”

“You are. We are. We would be even if we hadn’t just . . .” She chuckled, taking in the state of them for the first time, sprawled naked and messy across the cushions. How did anyone ever find the willpower to do anything else after something like this? “Shall we stay here tonight?”

“On a floor? Without even a sheet?”

“It’s comfortable enough. We have these,” she said with a grin, plumping one long-suffering cushion at his head. She twisted around just enough to grab her discarded calico skirt. “And this. Not very pretty, but quite cozy.”

He laughed as she covered them crookedly with the skirt, yet she sensed he was unswayed. 

“You  _ want _ to get up right now?”

“No, not especially.” Ben rolled onto his side and pulled her closer until her face was tucked into the hot, dark space between them. “My bed tomorrow night, though.”

“Oh ho ho, you trust me not to go through your secret necromancer’s things again as you sleep?”

He scoffed, then yawned as his eyes slowly closed. “I said nothing about sleep. If I have my way, the thought won’t even cross your mind.”

Rey allowed herself a broad, secret smile and drew her arms around him in a tight hug. One more night like this, and then she would be whole again. She refused to think that any other outcome was possible.


	5. Back to Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! <3
> 
> You can find me on Twitter at thisgarbagepic1 and on Tumblr at thisgarbagepicker (though until we live in a post-TROS world, my activity will probably be dropping drastically, haha).

The next night was cloudless, and the moon, nearly full, reached its long fingers through the window to cast a silver glow over Rey’s still form. She was lying in his bed with her eyes closed, half covered by the thick blankets. Her face was relaxed, her body limp and heavy. At a glance, she looked asleep, though Kylo knew she was not, and he tried to ignore how the moonlight made her resemble her body as he’d found it in the Vespertine: cold, pale, blue-tinged and frost-kissed. Being as close to her as he was now dispelled the morbid likeness quickly enough, though he’d have preferred not to have noticed it at all.

So he focused on the differences. Here, she did not look grim and forgotten. Her expression as he let his hand wander idly over her skin was one of distant serenity. She was warm to the touch, and when his fingers glanced her neck and traveled slowly downward to sweep along her ribs, she emitted a gentle sigh that made him feel a twist of desire. He was being selfish, probably. He’d had more than his share of her tonight. He’d memorized the feel of her sweat mingling with his as their bodies tangled; and her smell, that fleeting aura of ripening fruits and sleeping flowers and the cold melt of frost at dawn; and the taste of her when he’d buried his face between her thighs, first to her shock and then to her vocal, ecstatic approval. 

Yet if he pressed his ear to her chest, he would neither hear nor feel a heartbeat. If he let his fingers settle along her throat, there would be no skipping pulse of blood as it raced beneath her skin. And when he fell asleep with her in his arms, he would awaken with a jolt to the sudden perception of her absence, as he had that morning. It was like discovering an illusionist’s tricks. At a moment like this, when it was tempting to forget that this house was a prison to Rey as much as a home, such things were potent, jarring reminders of what was at stake tomorrow. Her happiness and future depended on their success.

If only he could sleep. He envied the ease with which she had settled into her own version of it after their most recent amorous efforts. Shuffling closer, he drew his hand lightly upward again, barely more than the suggestion of contact. He could feel the faint buzz of spirit matter between her form and his palm, like the tickle of static. Rey’s throat bobbed as she swallowed, and he followed the line of it with his eyes to the small, dark hollow between her collarbones, then further down. Her breasts looked most inviting. He stroked the swell of one, and when she gave another pleased sigh, traced the edge of her pale areola until the nipple began to tighten into a pretty bud. 

Her eyes flickered open, and she slipped a hand over his, holding it in place as she gave him a wry, heavy-lidded glance. “I thought you would be asleep by now.”

“I did too.” Her chest rose under his palm with one of her strange, empty yawns, an old reflex more than physical necessity. “Where do you go when you do that?”

“Not sure. It’s like closing off, I suppose. My thoughts curl up for a while and my senses thin out until I’m restored.”

“Do you dream?”

“No. Never.” 

“Do you miss it?”

She rolled onto her side to face him. “I used to dream about my parents, when I was small. That they came back and took me home. Or else it was usually nightmares—I had a very vivid imagination. So, no, I don’t really mind not doing that anymore.”

“When you’re reunited with your body, maybe that will change.”

With a shrug, Rey tugged the blanket higher and brushed her hand against his.

“I hope so. It’s a bit funny, though. After waiting so long, and now realizing what it was all worth, being alive, I mean . . . I don’t really care anymore. The empty space is gone. It hurts less.”

“In my experience, it takes time to reach that point.”

Her gaze slid over his face and settled beyond. She’d just decided something, and he saw the question forming behind her eyes before she uttered a word. 

“When I was telling you about why I attempted that ritual, and you told me you understood, you really meant that. ‘In your experience.’ Right?”

“I did.”

“You could have told me more.”

“You were remembering. It was your time to speak.”

“Well, I’ve spoken quite a lot since you’ve come here. More than I’m accustomed to, truth be told. So.” She smiled warmly and shifted her head to share his pillow. “Your experience. What is that?”

He hesitated.

“You could say it’s inherited,” he said. “I’m afraid the most interesting things about my family are also the most sordid ones.”

“Sordid details are the best sort.”

When he glanced at her, her eyes had widened with macabre interest. It was rather charming. 

“I told you my family disapproved of my intentions to study necromancy, but I didn’t tell you why.”

“You were evasive, yes. I admit I made some assumptions.”

“Well, the simple truth is, it drove my grandfather mad.”

Her eyes were still wide, though there was a touch of horror there now. “How?”

“I only have the story as it comes from my mother, but . . . she made sure I knew it well. Her mother died quite young, when she and my uncle were barely out of the nursery. And Grandfather must have loved my grandmother a great deal, because he never recovered. He had the Sight, but rather than find consolation in it, he became obsessed with the idea that he could bring his wife back, in spirit if not in body.” 

Ben had seen a portrait of them together—his handsome, brooding grandfather and regal but warm-eyed grandmother, two chubby toddlers clinging to her skirts. It was difficult to imagine such an idyllic image leading to the tragedy it had. Though after the events of the last few weeks, he thought he understood. He could see what would drive a person to the edge of reason to recover someone they loved.

The ease of that realization, a thing unearthed by accident, provoked a twinge in his chest. He cleared his throat and continued.

“He turned to the darkest, most perilous forms of necromancy in service of this goal, neglecting his children, the family estate, his own health, society, all of it. He became increasingly desperate and reckless. After many years of this, his spirit was brittle and fractured and his psyche entirely ruined. My uncle found him one night in the attic, insensible and violent, ranting about some malevolent spirit called the Dark Father. He died in an institution, plagued by shadows and ghouls, never quite certain in which realm he resided.”

Against his chest, Rey was stiff and still.

“That’s dreadful. I’m— How—” Her brow contracted, and she nodded slowly with understanding. “So they feared you would make the same mistakes.”

“I would not have been the first. And they weren’t so wrong. I nearly did. One of the first things I did when I felt—wrongly—that I was adequately prepared was attempt to summon the spirit of my father.” 

“Oh.”

“Before he met my mother, he was involved in . . . shall we say, unsavory activities of the criminal variety. He reformed himself for a while, I think, when they married. He became a proper businessman and ran a shipping company. But when I was sixteen, his body was found in a river, and shortly after that my mother discovered he had never really gotten away from his old life. Maybe it was an escape, or habit, or . . .” 

Kylo shook his head, at a loss and far enough beyond caring that he no longer fell easily into aimless speculation. 

“I had admired him. And we were close, so it felt like an enormous betrayal. I wanted to know why he couldn’t bring himself to give up that life. Why we weren’t enough." He let out a long sigh, easing the tightness in his throat. "Nothing ever came of it. My attempt to summon him was a failure. The spirit I called up was not my father’s at all but a shade that took his form to torment me until I banished it to the netherrealm. And all I got for my efforts was a week of delirium and the feeling that I’d lost something I couldn’t get back.”

“I think I know exactly what you mean. That feeling.”

“You do.” He let his eyes fall shut as her forehead brushed his. “You know, in all the time since, you’re the first person I’ve told.”

“I’m happy you did. It makes me feel less alone.”

“It does, doesn’t it.”

“Though for all that the Sight runs in your family, it does not seem good fortune does.”

He groaned with dark amusement. “You’re not wrong.”

“Perhaps you’ll be the one to amend that.”

“If tomorrow night goes according to plan, I’ll consider it done.”

“Oh?”

“Nothing has ever mattered to me as much as you. This, I mean. Getting you— Bringing you back.” Silently cursing his inept babbling, he opened his eyes and found hers focused on his face, bemused and shining. “I just— I’ll consider this undertaking, my career, the things I’ve learned and inherited . . . worthwhile. If I know you’ll have your life back. Wherever it takes you.”

She studied him a bit longer, bit her lip, then kissed him tenderly at the corner of his mouth. 

“What if it took us someplace together?” she said, closing her eyes and snuggling deeper under the blankets. “I always wondered what it would be like to travel the railway from Truro to Paddington. For a start.”

He closed his eyes and settled his face against her hair.

“It would be a good start.”

  
  


⊖

  
  


As Kylo held the vial of trance elixir up to the light, he caught Rey eyeing it with interest. They were seated at the center of the hidden room, making their final preparations. The apothecary box sat open, and the mirror he’d passed through a few days before was linked to them with a single, thick line of chalk that ended at the edge of the salt circle he had laid out. Outside, the moon was full and near its zenith. Inside, the space between the realms was thinner than ever—thin enough for a corporeal being to pass through.

“That’s the stuff you took the last time?”

Her voice lacked the displeasure it held when she’d found him in the miserable tail-end of a trance a few days past. Now there was a note of curiosity, as if she wished to learn.

“It is. Salvia, mostly. The datura—yes, from your garden,” he said, noting her raised eyebrow. “Some other things. I’ve diluted it somewhat. The trance lasted longer than I planned for.”

“Is that something that happens often?”

“It’s not entirely unexpected. Precautions aside, trances are rarely a precise undertaking.” 

“What’s it feel like to leave your body?” she asked. “I don’t remember the moment it happened to me. I must have been asleep.”

He undid the top few buttons of his shirt and got to work on his sleeves. “Not very good initially. It feels like dying, and not peacefully. But the moment your spirit shakes loose, it’s . . . quite pleasant. Light. Very freeing, like no harm can come to you. Some find it tempting not to return.”

“You?”

He shook his head.

“Those people have not spent decades divided,” she said. “I don’t think they’d find the experience appealing were it extended so.”

“No, probably not.” 

Kylo scanned the room with his eyes, cast a look up at the ceiling as if he might find the moon shining down at them in approval, then looked back at Rey. She regarded him evenly, calm and ready. There were so many things he wanted to say to her. He swallowed them. 

“Shall we begin?”

“I’m ready, but before we proceed, I wanted to . . .” Her expression folded in on itself for a moment, then brightened. “I wanted to say thank you. I haven’t really done that yet, put my gratitude into plain words.”

“There’s no need. I couldn’t have left you in such a state.”

“I know. But more than that. You were—are—the first friend I’ve had in so long. And if this weren’t to work for some reason—”

“It will.”

“Just let me—” She let a sharp breath out through her nose and looked hard at him, though he detected the affection in her exasperation. “Ben. Let me say it. And let me tell you now, in case this doesn’t work and I don’t  _ get  _ a chance to do it later, that . . . I love you. And whether or not you feel the same, you’ve let me experience what it must feel like to be loved by someone. I don’t just mean the last few nights. I mean every night before. They’ve all become some of my happiest memories, and . . . so. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” 

What an idiotic response. Here Rey was spilling her heart to him and he’d replied as if she’d just acknowledged some mildly helpful favor. He leaned closer, his heart already skipping so fast he wondered if he had taken the elixir and forgotten. Perhaps her sweet confession was simply a delusory symptom of toxins in his blood, an illusion brought on by his mind seeking comfort as his body faltered. 

But no, he was lucid. This was real.

“I mean . . . as for what I feel—you’re right. And I should say it. Not because I don’t think I’ll get another chance but because it’s true and you should know.” He took her hand and raised the back of her knuckles to his lips, then the tips of her fingers, then her palm. “I love you, Rey. And I will love you just the same when you’re back here, whole again.”

Her reply was a quiet, contented hum as she slid a thumb over his bottom lip, then let her hand fall back to her lap. 

“It sounds as if we’re both ready to begin, then.”

The elixir was bitter on his tongue when he tipped the vial to his lips, and he was hyper-aware of the cool thickness of it sliding down his throat as Rey laid her palms over his, her fingers pressed lightly to the inside of his wrists as he mirrored her. He closed his eyes to wait for the rest to come as it always did—slow and insinuating at first, then like a dive off the edge of a cliff in a storm. He’d expected the usual moments of distress: the racing of his pulse, the onset of chills and tremors, the sweating and shortness of breath, the dizziness, the feeling of existing in two places at once, watching himself and being watched. 

But even as those things began, the brush of her skin against his was a constant, steady thrum of comfort. Her fingers moved imperceptibly over his pulse as if to soothe. Her spirit and his began to wind together, joined at the edges, drawn to the same place beyond the barrier of life and death. It was not so bad; not even the final, abrupt shake deep within as the tether began to stretch.

His spirit slipped loose just as his body slumped to the floor. He opened his eyes and looked at Rey. She was staring at the spot behind him, where his body lay prone and seemingly on the other side of a gauzy curtain. 

“Is this it?” she asked, her hands flexing over his, still touching. “Are we in the Vespertine?”

“Yes.”

“Is it safe for me to let go of you?” He nodded, and she slowly took her hands back as her eyes drifted around the room. “It’s a bit darker, but it looks just the same.”

“It usually resembles the place you pass through. It becomes more disorienting the further you stray,” he explained, getting to his feet as she did so. “Time and space don’t work the same as they do in the living world. Reflective surfaces act as—”

“Doors.”

“Yes. Entry points, anyway, to deeper levels.”

He had vague, broken recollections of his childhood slips, of thinking he was simply walking through his bedchamber in the dark and then suddenly finding himself in a field, or a desert, or a house he did not know. The windows in his home had looked out not onto the street below, but into countless places he’d never seen or heard of; the mirrors had glowed blank and harmless, as if concealing enticing surprises just beyond.

“And exit points, I hope,” Rey quipped, though he could sense her nervousness.

“With the full moon tonight, yes.”

“Fascinating.” Her voice was absent, as if she was listening to something far-off and just out of earshot. 

“Certainly never boring. You could start in this room, wander over to the next, and find yourself encountering a spirit that entered in Timbuktu.”

“Or we could . . .” Rey turned from him and walked slowly toward the mirror he had chosen, the very same she must have walked through body and soul a quarter century before. She laid her palm on the blank, dimly glowing surface. It shimmered on contact, little whorls of light and shadow leaping to reach back, inviting. “Go this way.”

She reached her other hand behind her and looked at him, waiting for him to take it. Kylo gave one last glance to his body, focused for a moment on the gentle, pervasive feeling of the invisible tether stretching between himself and it, then took her hand. Together they stepped through and left the room behind.

  
  


⊖

  
  


Ben had told her that he’d found her body in a garden— _ her _ garden, in fact, though she’d found it difficult to imagine. The last thing she remembered of her time in the Vespertine was a single tree in a vast expanse of colorless grass and the faint feeling of curling vines whispering over her wrists as if waiting to see whether she would brush them away. 

She could hardly believe how it had changed since. It  _ was _ her garden, though seemingly as dead as hers was stubbornly alive. Each detail, each gravel pathway, each plant and shrub and tree she had lovingly maintained as they’d sprouted of their own volition over years and years, all of it was there, and all of it was wilting and lifeless beneath the subdued glow of a sickly yellow moon. 

“Oh, this is just as strange as you described,” she said, toeing a pile of browned leaves out of her way. “Quiet as the grave, and the smell is . . .” Rey wrinkled her nose, though she couldn’t rightly say she hated the cloying aura of decay. It was the strongest she’d been able to smell anything in nearly five years. “Well, I won’t soon forget it.”

“Let’s continue on,” Ben suggested, a hand touching briefly touching her arm. “Your body is—”

“Yes, I know. Beneath the pear tree. Just ahead.”

‘Just ahead’ was a good deal farther than it should have been. Rey knew every twist and turn of the paths, but each one of them seemed to have become many times twistier. She could have sworn they walked down several of the same paths twice, thrice, as many as four or five times. All the same, she knew the way. Ever since the moment she and Ben had slipped into the Vespertine, she’d felt the return of the connection between her spirit and her body where it was hidden away. It urged her to close that distance and make it right. It was the missing piece.

She lost her patience. She began to run, sprinting through rows of drooping flowers and shriveled vines.

“Rey! Wait!”

She heard Ben calling her but could not stop. Her will and desires were fixed on a point at the end of the line. The tree soon came into view, strangely wide, tilting and bowing under the weight of rotten fruits. Some boughs were so overtaxed that they bent backward toward the ground like a willow’s branches to create a thicket. Rey pushed her way through, ignoring the scratching edges that caught at her face, hair, and shoulders. She heard Ben crashing along after her but didn’t slow until she rounded the trunk.

She found herself exactly as Ben had described. Rey looked down at her body in silent longing. The sadness she saw on her own face, frozen there for so long, wrung deep in her chest. She knew how to proceed—she’d read it several times over in Ben’s notes—but she had the sense that she would have known anyway, all on her own. Every particle of her being desired reunion. There was an excited buzz at her fingertips and toes, the feeling before taking a leap.

“Careful,” Ben cautioned from somewhere behind her. His presence was reassuring, but she could hardly focus on anything else other than her sleeping form. “You know what to do.”

“Yes.” 

Rey sank to her knees, hunched carefully over her body. Its hands were on the ground, the fingers sunk gently into the earth as vines wound about the wrists like bracelets . . . or manacles. With a frown, she pulled them away. They were thin and brittle yet resisted her, stinging her palms with hairlike trichomes and squirming like little snakes until she tossed the last one into the grass. Gently, she took her body’s hands and turned them palm-up in its lap, then pressed her own over them as she had done with Ben in the hidden room. The moment her fingers brushed its wrists and caught the feeble reply of a pulse, she began to feel different.

The pull that had compelled her to this point, that had always wrenched her back to the house from within the divide between life and death, was so insistent it hurt to hold herself back from it any longer. Her spirit had not experienced such perfect and complete recognition since the first time she’d touched Ben’s hand. Her vision began to swim, and she swayed somewhat as the world around her turned gray and then black, until she focused only on the contact between two sets of palms, both belonging to her. Her chest ached, and she noticed the sudden swim of heated blood in her limbs. Her fingers and toes were so numb and cold they burned as the pins-and-needles prickle of feeling returned to them. 

Distantly, she wondered if this was what Ben experienced every time his spirit began to shake loose of his body. That couldn’t be quite right, though—it was the feeling of dying, he’d said. This was the feeling of coming back to life, and it was not peaceful, and it did not feel good, but it was sublime.

Rey came back with a rattling gasp. Everything was stiff and heavy, even her eyelids as she struggled to open them. Tiny remnants of frost in her eyelashes sparkled in her vision each time she blinked. The place seemed brighter than it had, even bathed in such weak moonlight, and she had to look away. Her chest hurt more than ever—the delicious ache of her lungs expanding and contracting, of air filling and leaving them, of her heart beating strong and steady. A pair of cool hands settled over hers.

“How do you feel?”

“Ben!” 

How had she not seen him there? His face was taut with concern. She was shocked at the sound of her voice, all strained and hoarse with disuse. She coughed and struggled to sit up, muscles itching to move.

“It worked, I’m—” No sooner had she croaked the words out than she immediately felt dizzy and had to lie back down. She stretched her legs instead, wiggled her toes in her boots, flexed her fingers, and looked at him. “A bit unsteady, seems like.” She licked her dry lips, then winced. “And very thirsty.”

“Take it slow,” he said. Absurdly, her mind wandered immediately to how he’d spoken to her the night they’d made love for the first time. He must have realized it, because he gave a short chuff and shook his head. “Try again. We shouldn’t—”

“Waste time, I know.” 

Rey tried again and this time found her body more cooperative. It was amazing how heavy she felt, too aware of the weight of muscle and bone, like she’d just put on a poorly fitted gown, bustle too large, corset too tight. That feeling would pass. Ben had spoken of his body not quite feeling like his own immediately on returning to it. She imagined them both collapsing on the floor of the hidden room again, adjusting to the feeling of being fleshbound, together in it for the first time. 

But first they had to get back. He helped her to her feet, and after a few stumbling steps, she felt enough like herself to follow him at a quicker pace. The garden had changed again, and the further along they proceeded, the more it seemed to perceive that something crucial had been removed. It was simply collapsing now. Flowers fell over in clumps, shrubs crumbled, and, somewhere far behind them, she heard a groan and a crash that could only have been the tree. Even the stars were falling, streaking over the sky before blinking out.

“We’re nearly there,” Ben called back, as if sensing her alarm. “I promise, I can feel it. Don’t let go of my hand.”

Letting go was the last thing she had any intention of doing. Ahead, at the end of the path, she could see a faint glimmer in the empty night air. The nearer they drew to it, the more difficult it became to press on. The air was thicker and seemed to fight her. It was like walking into a fierce gale. She couldn’t hear, couldn’t see, and for a torturous stretch of moments, the only thing that assured her she hadn’t entirely ceased to exist was the feeling of Ben’s hand clutching hers and pulling her onward. 

Even so, the feeling became so unbearable—the heaviness, the push back, the nothingness—that she was certain she was being crushed to death. She opened her mouth to scream, eyes screwed shut, muscles tensed, urging her to run, though there was nowhere for her feet to take her. 

And suddenly everything returned. The surface beneath her feet was solid. The air was cool, but pleasantly so. She was back in the hidden room, running faster than she’d realized. Her feet slipped out from under her in the next moment as she tripped over something large and soft and went sprawling over the parquet, the scream caught in her throat and emerging as an obscenity-laced yelp. It took more strength than it should have just to roll over onto her back, and that alone made her dizzy again. She drew in a deep breath, held it as long as she could, and exhaled loudly. 

Only then did she feel centered enough to looked over at Ben. He was dazed and sweaty, a halo of scattered salt arcing over the mess of his dark hair, and appeared much the same as he had when she’d found him the last time—she supposed she did not look much better. She felt sick and rattled. She wouldn’t have traded that feeling for anything.

“Ben?” 

“Hn.” Slowly, his hand reached for her, groped around a bit, and settled at her ankle. “Alive?”

“Yes. Yes, I am. Are you?”

“Something like that. Feels like I was just kicked in the ribs.”

“That was me, I’m afraid. Sorry.”

“It was a strong kick.” He laughed weakly, then groaned. “Bodes well.”

She let out a muzzy hum of agreement and glanced at the mirror. It was shattered, glass littering the floor in front of it as if it had been punched outward from within. There was a change in the room, too, that she hadn’t noticed because she’d had no other point of reference before. Not just the room—something told her it extended to the entire property. Outside, her garden was withering in the cold, as it should have every year by this time.

She felt the restoration of a proper balance in the old place, so deep in her bones it was as certain to her as her name. Though Rhea Nemo no longer felt right. Maybe just Rey now. It felt like a good way to make a proper new start: a tribute to her past and who she had become since then.

With some difficulty, she dragged herself over to Ben’s side and cuddled up beneath his arm when he lifted it, which seemed to be the extent of his abilities for the time being. He was snoring lightly within moments, a hand resting over her heart. It was a wonder to be beside him like this, to breathe with him, to catch the moment the rise and fall of her chest fell into step with his. Together she and Ben would spend the night in the hidden room one last time, and then Rey never wanted to see it again.

She closed her eyes and felt sleep falling fast upon her. She welcomed whatever dreams might come with it. 

  
  


⊖

  
  


They left Nightbloomer House three days later, on a morning clear and cold as crystal. Rey had spent the first day sleeping. In fact, she’d slept so hard and deep after he’d helped her move to his bed that Kylo found himself reluctant to leave her side for more than a few minutes at a stretch, fearing that she might slip off again and be taken from him for good. Yet she did awaken, and when she did, it was with ravenous hunger and thirst, which he did his best to address (though he was a poor cook and she could not keep much down at first). By the second day she was already doing much better, acting much more like the woman he knew—dry-humored, sharp-witted, and maddeningly restless by the time the sun was setting. Her sickly pallor was finally vanquished by the glow of good health, and her movements were less stiff and more confident. That night, they made their plans to depart, then fell asleep huddled beneath his quilts,  _ The Mysterious Island _ face-open at the foot of the bed. 

As for what came next, Kylo found he was optimistic about the future. It was a foreign frame of mind, but one he would not begrudge becoming accustomed to. The matter of the house was settled. The garden was brown and bare, shining with a thin layer of snow from the night before, though it would return to full bloom in the spring in the hands of some new caretaker. With the thin place gone and the ghost problem taken care of, he supposed the plans to make the house a school would go forward after he’d collected his payment—though monetary compensation felt like an afterthought now, and he planned to put it all toward helping Rey get herself settled, if she would accept it. 

He locked the door up and turned to look at her as she waited at the bottom of the steps, beside the lane where a hansom cab was due to retrieve them shortly and take them to Truro for the next leg of their journey.

Rey was standing with her eyes closed and her face upturned, letting the sunlight touch every plane of it, still as a statue and wrapped in his winter coat. He watched her like that for far longer than was seemly, then quietly made his way down the steps to join her. Though he did not interrupt, she inclined her head a bit toward him.

“There’s something on your mind,” she said, eyes still closed.

“There’s always something on my mind.”

When he said nothing else, her face split with a grin wide enough to dimple her cheeks, and she opened one eye to glare. “So are you going to tell me what it is, or would you rather be smart?”

“Is both an option?”

She glared with both eyes, and he tamped down the urge to sweep her up in his arms and kiss her.

“I wondered,” he said instead, “if you’d like to stay a while with me. At my apartment in London, until you’ve gotten your affairs in order.”

“My affairs.”

“Employment. A place of your own.” 

“I know what my affairs are. I’ve a few ideas already.”

So did he. Yet her face was unreadable, and it was agonizing. 

“Well, it wouldn’t be as spacious as what you’re accustomed to, but it’s quite private and—”

“Anyplace I can come and go at will is leagues better than a prison,” she interrupted, “no matter how large or beautiful or filled with distractions that prison is. And I’d like very much to stay with you. I’ve been dreading our parting, in fact, and hoped you might suggest such an arrangement.”

“Ah, then it’s not just me.”

“Of course it’s not. Why do you seem surprised?” Her eyes narrowed, though she looked pleased as she leaned in and asked with an uncharacteristically coy lilt in her low voice, “Did you fear I would be terribly scandalized by you asking a young, unmarried woman to share your living quarters?”

He cocked an eyebrow as she continued to regard him with wry innocence. “I have little concern about scandal and much reason to believe you feel the same.”

Despite his insouciance, Kylo felt the tips of his ears go warm and was grateful to have them hidden beneath the brim of his hat, though he suspected she could sense his embarrassment anyway. Down the lane, the horse-drawn cab rounded the corner and proceeded through the iron gates. Rey noticed too—he perceived a leap in her anticipation to be gone and in the world again, saw the way her eyes darted and sparked, caught the shaky breath she tried to subdue as she looked back at him. 

“And I only hesitated,” he said firmly as he fixed his gaze on her sunlit face, “because I didn’t want to give the impression I intend to claim all your time as my own.”

She raised up on her toes and leaned in as if confiding a secret, until her warm breath tickled his jaw. 

“I’m inclined to let you claim quite a bit of it already, if you’re offering yours in turn,” she told him, then folded her hand into his. “So what do you think?”

“I think . . .” He blew out a long puff of air and smiled slowly as it faded from view. “I’d like nothing more than to embark on such an exchange. Of time and other things.” Though the cab was drawing quite close, he ignored its approach and brought his mouth close to her ear. “And I expect that you’ll find London most stimulating.”

“Stimulating? Oh, I do hope so,” she said with a puckish grin, and met him with ready lips as he leaned in to kiss her. They embraced long enough that the cabbie was standing by with averted eyes in a state of stoic affront when they finally parted. Rey slipped away, but not before snatching Kylo’s hat from his head and plopping it atop her own. When he feigned an attempt to get it back, she grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the cab, warm and smiling. “But first we have a train to catch.”


End file.
